ot think it is your duty to give some
consideration to the usual attitude towards it, and to what is generally
thought and said about it? Do you think it is conscientious to condemn
in a single instance without doing that?

Svava. I understand! I think I have done what you are urging me to do.
Ask mother!

Nordan. Oh, I daresay you and your mother have chattered and read a lot
about marriage and the woman question, and about abolishing distinctions
of class--now you want to abolish distinctions of sex too. But as
regards this special question?

Svava. What do you consider I have overlooked?

Nordan. Just this. Are you right in being equally as strict with men as
with women? Eh?

Svava. Yes, of course.

Nordan. Is it so much a matter of course? Go out and ask any one you
meet. Out of every hundred you ask, ninety will say "no"--even out of a
hundred women!

Svava. Do you think so? I think people are beginning to think otherwise.

Nordan. Possibly. But experience is necessary if one is to answer a
question like that.

Svava. Do you mean what you say?

Nordan. That is none of your business. Besides, I always mean what I
say.--A woman can marry when is sixteen; a man must wait till he is
five-and-twenty, or thirty. There is a difference.

Svava. There _is_ a difference! There are many, many times more
unmarried women than men, and they exhibit self-control. Men find it
more convenient to make a law of their want of self-control!

Nordan. An answer like that only displays ignorance. Man is a polygamous
animal, like many other animals--a theory that is very strongly
supported by the fact that women so outnumber men in the world. I
daresay that is something you have never heard before?

Svava. Yes, I have heard it!

Nordan. Don't you laugh at science! What else we to put faith in, I
should like to know?

Svava. I should just like men to have the same trouble over their
children that women do! Just let them have that, Uncle Nordan, and I
fancy they would soon change their principles! Just let them experience
it!

Nordan. They have no time for that; they have to govern the world.

Svava. Yes, they have allotted the parts themselves!--Now, tell me this,
Dr. Nordan. Is it cowardly not to practise what you preach?

Nordan. Of course it is.

Svava. Then why do you not do it?

Nordan. I? I have always been a regular monster. Don't you know that,
dear child?

Svava. Dear Uncle Nordan--you have such long wh