human
I don't care anything about your marriage, he said.
gpt
A bit of church flummery. Use your brains, Sylvia. You know that couldn't make any difference.
human
I'm not thinking about the flummery. That isn't it. It's the fact that I love the man I married.
gpt
All very well and good. But you know you used to love me.
human
No, I never did.
gpt
Oh, yes you did. You just forget. At any rate, you was as much to me as you could ever be to a husband. You know you can't drop me just because it's convenient for you to take up with somebody else. You know that's not the way I'm built.
human
Whatever I was to you, Fectnor, she said,
gpt
I became because I was forced into it.
human
I never forced you,
gpt
In one way, you didn't; but just the same ... you had both hands reached out to seize me when I fell. You never tried to help me; you were always digging the pitfall under my feet. You were forever holding out your hand with money in it; and there was you on one side of me with your money, and my father on the other with his never-ending talk about poverty and debts and his fear of you--and you know you took pains to make him fear you--and his saying always that it wouldn't make any difference in what people thought of me, whether I stood out against you or....
human
That's book talk, Sylvia. Come out into the open. I know what the female nature is. You're all alike. You all know when to lower your eyes and lift your fan and back into a corner. That's the female's job, just as it's the male's job to be bold and rough. But you all know to a hair how far to carry that sort of thing. You always stop in plenty of time to get caught.
gpt
I suppose, she said after a pause,
human
You're not doing yourself justice, Sylvia, he said.
gpt
You're not one of the bartering kind. You'd have killed me--you'd have killed yourself--before you'd have let me touch you, if you hadn't liked me. You know that's a fact.
human
There was a time when you had a kind of fascination for me. The way you had of making other men seem little and dumb, when you came in and spoke. You seemed so much alive. I noticed once that you didn't count your change when you'd paid for some drinks. That was the way in everything you did. You seemed lavish with everything that was in you; you let the big things go and didn't worry about the change. You were a big man in some ways, Fectnor. A girl needn't have been ashamed of admiring you. But Fectnor ... I've come to see what a low life it was I was leading. In cases like that, what the woman yields is ... is of every possible importance to her, while the man parts only with his money.
gpt
I'm glad you said that, he cried triumphantly.
human
There's a lie in that, and I want to nail it. The man gives only his money, you say. Do you understand what that means where a hard-working devil is concerned? What has he got besides the few pennies he earns? When he gives his money, isn't he giving his strength and his youth? Isn't he giving his manhood? Isn't he giving the things that are his for only a few years, and that he can't get back again? I'm not talking about the dandies who have a lot of money they never earned. I should think a woman with as much as one bone in her body would take a shotgun to that sort whenever they came around. I'm talking about the fellows that sweat for what they get. A lot of mollycoddles and virtuous damn fools have built up that Sunday-school junk about the woman giving everything, and the man giving nothing. But I want to tell you it's nip and tuck as to who gives the most. A woman takes a man's money as if it grew on bushes. Go and watch him earn it, if you want to know what his part of the bargain is.
gpt
That would sound a little more impressive, Fectnor, she said,
human
This election business is only a side-line of mine, he replied.
gpt
I enjoy it. There's nothing like knowing you can make a lot of so-called men roll over and play dead. If a man wants to find out where he stands, let him get out and try to make a crowd do something. Let him try to pull any prunes-and-prism stuff, either with his pocketbook or his opinions, and see where he gets off at. No, Sylvia, you played the wrong card. Eleven months out of the year I work like a nigger, and if you don't know it, you'd better not say anything more about it.