"Doctor, will you answer me a question--truthfully, I mean?"
"I will if I can," he flashed back at me.
"You said a few minutes since that you had thought me like the rest. Who did you mean by 'the rest'--women as a class--the class you go about with--or the women of the stage?"
"Well ... if you want the honest truth--I had actresses in mind when I spoke."
"You believe actresses are any worse, even as bad, as the women I met at dinner last week?"
"Um ... ye-s ... I think actresses would go farther."
"Yes. None of these women--at least not many of them--you've met would really go the limit. They do a good deal of playing around the edge, but it's only once in a while they get into a scrape.... Look here! I don't hold a brief for judging the relative virtues of women. I don't blame anybody for squeezing all the enjoyment they can out of life--for you don't know what's coming hereafter."
The doctor showed signs of irritation....
A sound from Boy suggested my next remark.
"That's a horse of another colour.... Though when you come right down to it I don't see that a family cuts much ice. Children are for the most part accidents. They just happen. Their conception is the result of carelessness or laziness. Their ultimate arrival is accepted a good deal like a deluge or a fire; you do everything you can to stop it--to the verge of self-destruction--then you throw up your hands and accept the inevitable. There isn't one love child in a million. I mean a child of love in the sense of premeditated and welcome conception. Men and women marry for one of a half dozen reasons, most commonly because they believe they are in love. When the honeymoon wanes and you get right down to commonplace, every-day life in all its ugliness, we begin to feet that we've been buncoed. If we are truthful with ourselves we acknowledge a share of the bunco game. Way back in our subconscious mind the sensation of our courtship, the pursuit and the first mad moments of possession have stuck fast.... We fairly throb at the thought of them. We begin to hanker for a repetition of these sensuous dope-dreams.... Presently we are off hot for the chase ... and a little dash of the forbidden fruit acts as a stimulant. Like all stimulants it becomes necessary to increase the dose after a while to insure efficacy. That's where we begin to slop over...." The doctor leaned back with the air of one who is satisfied with his diagnosis.