ncanny, hellish strength--she's
a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she's got the start of you. Oh,
it's a terrible experience, if you're not a bourgeois, and not one of
the knuckling-under money-making sort."

"Knuckling-under sort. Yes. That is it," said the Marchese.

"But can't there be a balancing of wills?" said Lilly.

"My dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the other
goes down. One acts, the other takes. It is the only way in love--And
the women are nowadays the active party. Oh, yes, not a shadow of doubt
about it. They take the initiative, and the man plays up. That's how it
is. The man just plays up.--Nice manly proceeding, what!" cried Argyle.

"But why can't man accept it as the natural order of things?" said
Lilly. "Science makes it the natural order."

"All my ---- to science," said Argyle. "No man with one drop of real
spunk in him can stand it long."

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" cried the Italian. "Most men want it so. Most men want
only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up to her
when she has roused them. Most men want only this: that a woman shall
choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and come
up when she shall provoke him. Otherwise he is to keep still. And the
woman, she is quite sure of her part. She must be loved and adored, and
above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire. There she must not
be thwarted, or she becomes a devil. And if she is obeyed, she becomes a
misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round for the next man whom she
can bring under. So it is."

"Well," said Lilly. "And then what?"

"Nay," interrupted Aaron. "But do you think it's true what he says?
Have you found it like that? You're married. Has your experience been
different, or the same?"

"What was yours?" asked Lilly.

"Mine was the same. Mine was the same, if ever it was," said Aaron.

"And mine was EXTREMELY similar," said Argyle with a grimace.

"And yours, Lilly?" asked the Marchese anxiously.

"Not very different," said Lilly.

"Ah!" cried Del Torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something.

"And what's your way out?" Aaron asked him.

"I'm not out--so I won't holloa," said Lilly. "But Del Torre puts it
best.--What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?"

"The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker
and the woman the answerer. It must change."

"But it doesn't. Prrr!" Argyle made his trumpeting noise.