"Well--shall I say? We have unrest. We have another need. We have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. Do I speak the truth?"

"Yes. But what is the something?"

"I don't know. I don't know. But it is something in love, I think. It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer," said the Italian.

"But why should it? Is that the nature of love?" said Lilly.

"I don't know. Truly. I don't know.--But perhaps it is in the nature of love--I don't know.--But I tell you, I love my wife--she is very dear to me. I admire her, I trust her, I believe her. She is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother.--And so, I am very happy. I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage.--But wait.

Nothing has changed--the love has not changed: it is the same.--And yet we are NOT happy. No, we are not happy. I know she is not happy, I know I am not--"

"Why should you be?" said Lilly.

"Yes--and it is not even happiness," said the Marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. "It is not even happiness. No, I do not ask to be happy. Why should I? It is childish--but there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don't know where. But it drives us, and eats away the life--and yet we love each other, and we must not separate--Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me at all in what I say? I speak what is true."

"Yes, I understand. I'm in the same dilemma myself.--But what I want to hear, is WHY you think it is so. Why is it?"

"Shall I say what I think? Yes? And you can tell me if it is foolish to you.--Shall I tell you? Well. Because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. Do you understand?--You know--supposing I go to a woman--supposing she is my wife--and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well.

I do not feel like it. She puts me off--till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am--but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and I don't want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me--till she rouses me once more. So, and so she rouses me--and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good, very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.--I do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. She will yield to me--because I insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? It is something worse than nothing--worse than nothing. And so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.--If I say to her, she says it is not true--not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know--"

The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly's face.

"But does it matter?" said Lilly slowly, "in which of you the desire initiates? Isn't the result the same?"

"It matters. It matters--" cried the Marchese.

"Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters--" interrupted Argyle sagely.

"Ay!" said Aaron.

The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.

"It matters!" he cried. "It matters life or death. It used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman's desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a woman's head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. This is Eve. Ah, I hate Eve. I hate her, when she knows, and when she WILLS. I hate her when she will make of me that which serves her desire.--She may love me, she may be soft and kind to me, she may give her life for me. But why? Only because I am HERS. I am that thing which does her most intimate service. She can see no other in me. And I may be no other to her--"

"Then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?" said Lilly.

"Because I cannot. I cannot. I would. But I cannot. The Borghesia--the citizens--the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can. Oh, yes. The bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and their wives love them. They are the marital maquereaux--the husband-maquereau, you know. Their wives are so stout and happy, and they dote on their husbands and always betray them. So it is with the bourgeoise. She loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to betray him. Or she is a Madame Bovary, seeking for a scandal. But the bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same. He is the horse, and she the driver. And when she says gee-up, you know--then he comes ready, like a hired maquereau. Only he feels so good, like a good little boy at her breast. And then there are the nice little children. And so they keep the world going.--But for me--" he spat suddenly and with frenzy on the floor.

"You are quite right, my boy," said Argyle. "You are quite right.

They've got the start of us, the women: and we've got to canter when they say gee-up. I--oh, I went through it all. But I broke the shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, I can tell you, and I didn't care whether I smashed her up along with it or not. I didn't care one single bit, I assure you.--And here I am. And she is dead and buried these dozen years. Well--well! Life, you know, life. And women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of you. There's NOTHING they won't do to you, once they've got you. Nothing they won't do to you. Especially if they love you. Then you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and her in it. Otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose. And you'll submit. Oh, you'll submit, and go on calling her my darling. Or else, if you won't submit, she'll do for you. Your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. Or she'll do for you. For a woman has an uncanny, 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.

"Does it?" asked Lilly of the Marchese.

"No. I think it does not."

"And will it ever again?"

"Perhaps never."

"And then what?"

"Then? Why then man seeks a _pis-aller_. Then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will.--So he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. He thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes.--But in this, too, he is mistaken. Because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man."

"And so young girls are no good, even as a _pis-aller_."

"No good--because they are all modern women. Every one, a modern woman.

Not one who isn't."

"Terrible thing, the modern woman," put in Argyle.

"And then--?"

"Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love.--But it is all _pis-aller_, you know."