instantly springs up, and flings it into a corner. Points to that covering Sylvester’s chair.] Throw that thing away!

SYLVESTER.

All right. I’m used to ’em. We grow ’em at our house. [Looks round.] I might be sitting in my wife’s boudoir! Same furniture, same flowers, same photographs—hallo, that’s rather a pretty woman over there!

[Crosses.

COLONEL.

A pretty woman, where? [Crosses.] No, not my style!

SYLVESTER.

Ha! ha!

COLONEL.

What are you laughing at?

SYLVESTER.

My wife! I didn’t recognize her.

[Goes about examining photographs.

COLONEL.

Ten thousand pardons! I had no idea——

SYLVESTER.

Bless me, my wife again!

COLONEL [looking].

That’s better. That’s much better.

SYLVESTER.

It’s an older photograph. Agnes was quite a woman when I married her, but she grows more and more ethereal. Philosophy doesn’t seem very nourishing.

COLONEL.

She’s a philosopher?

SYLVESTER.

Haven’t you read her book? “Aspirations after a Higher Morality.”

COLONEL.

The old morality’s high enough for me.

SYLVESTER.

I’ve tried to read it, but I didn’t succeed. However, I’ve cut the leaves and dropped cigar ash on the final chapter. Why, here she is again!

COLONEL.

Three photographs? And you’re not jealous?

SYLVESTER.

My dear Colonel, who am I to be jealous?

COLONEL.

Her husband, aren’t you?

SYLVESTER.

Yes, I am Mrs. Sylvester’s husband. I belong to my wife, but my wife doesn’t belong to me. She is the property of the public. Directly I saw her photograph in a shop-window I realized the situation. People tell me I’ve a wife to be proud of; but they’re wrong. Mrs. Sylvester is not my wife; I am her husband.

COLONEL [taking up a book].

This is what comes of educating women. We have created a Frankenstein. “Man, the Betrayer—A Study of the Sexes—By Enid Bethune.”

SYLVESTER.

Oh, I know her. She comes to our house.

COLONEL.

And has a man betrayed her?

SYLVESTER.

Never. Not likely to.

COLONEL.

That’s what’s the matter, perhaps?

SYLVESTER.

Her theory is, that boys ought to be girls, and young men should be maids. [Colonel throws down the book.] That’s how she’d equalize the sexes.

COLONEL.

Pshaw! [Takes up another book.] “Ye Foolish Virgins!—A Remonstrance—by Victoria Vivash.”

SYLVESTER.

Another soul! She’s also for equality. Her theory is, that girls should be boys, and maids should be young men. Goes in for latchkeys and that sort of thing.

COLONEL [throws down the book].

Bah! [Takes up a third.] “Naked and Unashamed—A Few Plain Facts and Figures—by Mary Bevan, M.D.” Who on earth’s she?

SYLVESTER.

One of the plain figures. She comes to our house, too.

COLONEL [reads].

“The Physiology of the Sexes!” Oh, this eternal babble of the sexes! [Throws book down.] Why can’t a woman be content to be a woman? What does she want to make a beastly man of herself for?

SYLVESTER.

But my wife isn’t a woman.

COLONEL.

None of them are, my boy. A woman, who is a woman, doesn’t want to be anything else. These people are a sex of their own, Sylvester. They have invented a new gender. And to think my nephew’s one of them!

[Strides up and down, seizes another antimacassar and flings it into another corner.

SYLVESTER.

Oh, he’s young. Don’t despair!

COLONEL.

I don’t despair! Do you suppose this folly can continue? Do you imagine that these puffed-up women will not soon burst of their own vanity? Then, the reaction! then will come our turn! Mark my words, Sylvester, there’ll be a boom in men!

[Rubbing his hands.

Enter Gerald, door in flat.

GERALD.

Good afternoon. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.

[Shakes hands with Colonel.

COLONEL.

Here you are, at last.

GERALD [shaking hands with Sylvester].

How’s Mrs. Sylvester?

SYLVESTER.

I was just going to ask you. You see more of her than I do.

GERALD.

We are collaborating.

COLONEL.

In the Higher Morality?

SYLVESTER.

How are you getting on?

GERALD.

Oh, we are only on the threshold. I finished the first chapter about daybreak.

COLONEL.

That’s how you waste the precious hours of night? Gad, sir, when I was your age——

GERALD.

That was thirty years ago. Things have changed since then.

COLONEL.

And they haven’t improved.

GERALD.

That is a question.

COLONEL.

Oh, everything’s a question nowadays! Nothing is sacred to a young man fresh from Oxford. Existence is a problem to be investigated; in my youth, it was a life to be lived; and, I thank Heaven, I lived it. Ah, the nights I had!

SYLVESTER.

Would it be impertinent to inquire upon what subject my wife is engaged?

GERALD.

Our subject is the Ethics of Marriage.

SYLVESTER.

Of my marriage?

GERALD.

Of marriage in the abstract.

COLONEL.

As if people married for ethics! There is no such thing, sir. There are no ethics in marriage.

GERALD.

That is the conclusion at which we have arrived.

COLONEL.

You are only on the threshold, and yet you have arrived at a conclusion?

GERALD.

So much is obvious. It is a conclusion to which literature and the higher culture inevitably tend. The awakened conscience of woman is already alive to it.

COLONEL.

Conscience of woman! What are you talking about?