"Well, let us be reasonable.
There may come a time when woman can be free and independent, but that time
is a long way off yet. The world is organized on the basis of every woman's
having a protector--of every decent woman's having a husband, unless she
remains in the home of some of her blood-relations. There may be women
strong enough to set the world at defiance. But you are not one of
them--and you know it. You have shown it to yourself again and again in
the last forty-eight hours. Your bringing-up has kept you a child in real
knowledge of real life, as distinguished from the life in that fashionable
hothouse. If you tried to assert your so-called independence, you would be
the easy prey of a scoundrel or scoundrels. When I, who have lived in the
thick of the fight all my life, who have learned by many a surprise and
defeat never to sleep except with the sword and gun in hand, and one eye
open--when I have been trapped as Roebuck and Langdon have just trapped
me--what chance would a woman like you have?"
She did not answer or change expression.
"Is what I say reasonable or unreasonable?" I asked gently.
"Reasonable--from _your_ standpoint," she said.
She gazed out into the moonlight, up into the sky.
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