Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/204

202 "Only Aunt Sophy thinks our sphere is politics, while you think it's domesticity," said Teresa.

"Of course I think it is. Her home and society—what more does any woman want?"

"Ah, society! When you take in society, you let in the serpent, and its wisdom! Unless you mean just an occasional tea-drinking, or a dove luncheon. Do you think if one's to have any relations with men and women one doesn't need all the knowledge possible?"

"You have your instinct—that can't go wrong," said the bachelor.

"Oh, can't it! You'd reduce us to the rudiments, wouldn't you? Why shouldn't we have the amusement of contemplating the world and people as they really are? It's the most instructive spectacle possible. I can never be thankful enough that I married a man who isn't afraid of reality, for me any more than for himself. You would shut your wife up in a toy paradise, with everything upholstered in rose-colour."

"There are a whole lot of things I know that my wife would never know, you may depend on that," Fairfax responded with emphasis. "What nonsense, imagining that a man's view of life and a woman's can ever be the same!"

"And can't one be supposed capable of taking to some degree an impersonal view of life? Can't