FOR US THE LIVING BY ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

“And what did the man get out of it.”

“He got—well—a family and home life, and someone to do his cooking, and a thousand other little services, and if you will pardon me mentioning it, he had a woman to sleep with any time he needed one.”

“Let’s take the last first; was she necessarily the woman he wanted to ‘sleep’ with as you so quaintly put it?”

“Yes, I suppose so, else he probably wouldn’t have asked her to marry him. No, by God, I know that is not true. It may be true when they first marry, but I know damn well that most married men see women every day that they would rather have than their own wives. I’ve watched ’em in every port.”

“How about yourself. Perry?”

“Me? I’m not—I wasn’t married.”

“Didn’t you ever see a woman you wanted to enjoy physically?”

“Of course. Many of them.”

“Then why didn’t you marry?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to be tied down.”

“If a man didn’t have children to support and a wife to support would he be tied down by marriage?”

“Why yes, in a way. She would expect him to do everything with her and would raise Cain if he stepped out with other women and would expect him to entertain her sisters and her cousins and her aunts, and would be sore if he had to work on their anniversary.”

“Good Lord! What a picture you paint. I don’t understand all of your expressions but it sounds unbearable.”

“Of course not all women are like that, some of them are good sports—man to man, but you can’t tell when you marry them.”

“It sounds from your description as if men had nothing to gain by marriage but an available mistress. And tell me, weren’t there women for hire then at a lower cost than supporting one woman for life?”

“Oh yes, certainly. But they weren’t satisfactory to most men. You see, a man doesn’t like to feel that a woman goes to bed with him just for the money in his pocket.”

“But you just said that women married to be supported.”

“That’s not quite what I meant. Or that’s not all—at least not usually. Anyhow it’s different. Besides men don’t always play the game. You see a man marries partially to have exclusive right to a woman’s attention, especially her body. But lots of them carry it to extremes. Marriage is no excuse for a man to slap his wife’s face for dancing twice with another man—as I’ve seen happen.”

“But why should a man want to have exclusive possession of a woman?”

“Well, he just naturally does. It’s in his nature. Besides a man wants to be sure his children aren’t bastards.”

“We are no longer so sure, Perry, that such traits are ‘nature’ as you call them. And bastard is an obsolete term.”

At this moment an amber light flashed at the other end of the room. Diana arose and returned shortly with a roll of papers. “They have arrived. Here, look.” She unrolled them and spread them on the shelf-table. Perry saw that they were photostatic copies of pages of the Los Angeles Times, Harold-Express, and Daily News for July 13,1939. She pointed to a headline:

NAVAL FLIER KILLED IN CAR CRASH

Torrey Fines, Calif., July 12.

Lieutenant Perry V. Nelson, Navy pilot of Coronado, was killed today when he lost control of the car he was driving and plunged over the palisade here to his death on the rock below. Lieut. Nelson jumped or was thrown clear of the car but landed head first in a pile of loose rock at the foot of the cliff, splitting his skull. Death was instantaneous. Miss Diana Burwood of Pasadena was bathing on the beach below and narrowly escaped injury. She attempted to give first aid, then scaled the bluff and reported the accident with aid of a passing motorist.

There were similar stories in the other papers. The Daily News included a column cut of Perry in uniform. Diana examined this with interest. “The story checks perfectly, Perry. This is just a fair likeness of you, however.” Perry glanced at it.