“What do you call the weak point?”

He paused.  “The fact that the average American looks down on his wife.”

Mrs. Fairford was up with a spring.  “If that’s where paradox lands you!”

Bowen mildly stood his ground.  “Well—­doesn’t he prove it?  How much does he let her share in the real business of life?  How much does he rely on her judgment and help in the conduct of serious affairs?  Take Ralph for instance—­you say his wife’s extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that’s not what’s wrong.  It’s normal for a man to work hard for a woman—­what’s abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it.”

“To tell Undine?  She’d be bored to death if he did!”

“Just so; she’d even feel aggrieved.  But why?  Because it’s against the custom of the country.  And whose fault is that?  The man’s again—­I don’t mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to:  homo sapiens, Americanus.  Why haven’t we taught our women to take an interest in our work?  Simply because we don’t take enough interest in them.”

Mrs. Fairford, sinking back into her chair, sat gazing at the vertiginous depths above which his thought seemed to dangle her.

“You don’t?  The American man doesn’t—­the most slaving, self-effacing, self-sacrificing—?”

“Yes; and the most indifferent:  there’s the point.  The ‘slaving’s’ no argument against the indifference To slave for women is part of the old American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they’ve ceased to believe in.  Then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn’t know what else to do with it.”

“Then you call it a mere want of imagination for a man to spend his money on his wife?”

“Not necessarily—­but it’s a want of imagination to fancy it’s all he owes her.  Look about you and you’ll see what I mean.  Why does the European woman interest herself so much more in what the men are doing?  Because she’s so important to them that they make it worth her while!  She’s not a parenthesis, as she is here—­she’s in the very middle of the picture.  I’m not implying that Ralph isn’t interested in his wife—­he’s a passionate, a pathetic exception.  But even he has to conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed.  Where does the real life of most American men lie?  In some woman’s drawing-room or in their offices?  The answer’s obvious, isn’t it?  The emotional centre of gravity’s not the same in the two hemispheres.  In the effete societies it’s love, in our new one it’s business.  In America the real crime passionnel is a ’big steal’—­there’s more excitement in wrecking railways than homes.”