“I thought it best to raise no question or objection in signing the contract put before me with your sanction; but you must be aware, in the first place, that I have no means here of performing the pecuniary part of the covenant, no means of providing either maintenance or pin-money.”

The explanation of the latter phrase, which was immediately demanded, produced not a little amusement, after which Esmo replied gravely—­

“It will be very easy for you, if necessary, to realise a competence in the course of half a year.  A book relating your adventures, and describing the world you have left, would bring you in a very comfortable fortune; and you might more than double this by giving addresses in each of our towns, which, if only from the curiosity our people would entertain to see you with their own eyes, would attract crowded audiences.  You could get a considerable sum for the exclusive right to take your likeness; and, if you chose to explain it, you might fix your own price on the novel motive power you have introduced.  But there is another point in regard to the contract which you have overlooked, but which I was bound to bear in mind.  What you have promised is, I believe, what Eveena would have obtained from any suitor she was likely to accept.  But since you left the matter entirely to my discretion, I am bound to make it impossible that you should be a loser; and this document (and he handed me a small slip very much like that which contained the marriage covenant) imposes on my estate the payment of an income for Eveena’s life equal to that you have promised her.”

With much reluctance I found myself obliged to accept a dowry which, however natural and proper on Earth, was, I felt, unusual in Mars.  I may say that such charges do not interfere with the free sale of land.  They are registered in the proper office, and the State trustee collects them from the owner for the time being as quit-rents are collected in Great Britain or land revenue in India.  Turning to another but kindred question, I said—­

“Your marriage contract, like our own laws, appears to favour the weaker sex more than strict theoretical equality would permit.  This is quite right and practically inevitable; but it hardly agrees with the theory which supposes bride and bridegroom, husband and wife, to enter on and maintain a coequal voluntary partnership.”

“How so?” he inquired.

“The right of divorce,” I said, “at the end of two years belongs to the wife alone.  The husband cannot divorce her except under a heavy penalty.”

“Observe,” he answered, “that there is a grave practical inequality which even theory can hardly ignore.  The wife parts with something by the very fact of marriage.  At the end of two years, when she has borne two, three, or four children, her value in marriage is greatly lessened.  Her capacity of maintaining herself, in the days when women did work, was found practically to be even smaller than before marriage.  You may say that this really amounts to a recognition by custom of the natural inequality denied by law; but at any rate, it is an inequality which it was scarcely possible to overlook.  Examine the practical working of the covenants, and you will find that in affecting to treat unequals as equals they merely make the weaker the slave of the stronger.”