_Mrs. M._ (a little embarrassed and looking toward her husband deprecatingly, at which he laughs and shakes his head). Woman is a creature of impulse. She does not study what it is most politic for her to do: she gives herself utterly--she simply asks for everything in return.
_Beverly._ Does she give herself utterly? Does she not generally keep an accurate debit-and-credit account of what is due to her? Then the moment she feels her rights infringed upon, what is her usual course? She holds it her prerogative to set out upon a course of conduct eminently qualified to displease the very man whom it is her interest and her salvation to please.
_Mrs. M._ But he should try as well to please her.
_Beverly._ That is begging the question. Besides, her requirements are unreasonable. She holds too tight a rein: a man is never safe after he feels that strain at the bit. Now even you, Jenny--whom I hold up as a model of a wife--you will not let Philip express his admiration for a pretty woman without--
_Mrs. M._ (eagerly). I delight in having him admire any one whom I consider worthy of admiration. I do not like to see any man run away with by an infatuation for mere outside beauty.
_Beverly._ Yet "mere outside beauty" is clearly the most important gift Nature has bestowed upon women.
_Philip._ What is your recipe, Frank, for putting an end to disagreements between husbands and wives?
_Beverly._ Wives are to give up studying their own requirements, and try to understand their husbands.
_Beverly._ All men, instead of remaining bachelors like myself, will become infatuated with domestic life. No man could resist the prospect of being constantly caressed, waited upon, admired, flattered. And once married, a man's own home would become so fascinating a place to him that he would never, except against his will, exchange it for his club or the drawing-room of his neighbor's wife.
_Miss A._ And in return are husbands prepared to give up a nice sense of their own requirements and study to understand their wives?
_Beverly._ Not at all: they are far too stupid to understand their wives: there is something too fine and elusive about a woman's intellect and heart to be attained by one of our sex. Besides, are things ever equal--two souls ever just sufficiently like and unlike exactly to understand each other? Let women perfect themselves in the art of giving happiness, and the good action will command its own reward.