"Then why are you so serene under the menace of this miserable affair?
For myself I care nothing; I'd thank God for a divorce on any terms.
But you--dearest--dearest!--I cannot endure the thought of you
entangled in such a shameful--"
"Where is the shame, Clive? The real shame, I mean. In me there are
two selves; neither have, as yet, been disgraced by any disobedience
of any law framed by men for women. Nor shall I break men's
laws--under which women are governed without their own consent--unless
no other road to our common destiny presents itself for me to
follow."... She smiled, watching his intent and sombre face: "Don't fear for me, dear. I have come to understand what life is, and
I mean to live it, wholesomely, gloriously, uncrippled in body and
mind, unmaimed by folk-ways and by laws as ephemeral--" she turned
toward the open windows--"as those frail-winged things that float in
the sunshine above Spring Pond, yonder, born at sunrise, and at
sundown dead."
She laughed, leaning there on her dimpled elbows, stripping a peach of
its velvet skin: "The judges of the earth,--and the power of them!--What is it, dear,
compared to the authority of love! To-day men have their human will of
men, judging, condemning, imprisoning, slaying, as the moral fashion
of the hour dictates. To-morrow folk-ways change; judge and victim
vanish along with fashions obsolete--both alike, their brief reign
ended.
"For judge and victim are awake at last; and in the twinkling of an
eye, the old world has become a memory or a shrine for those tranquil
pilgrims who return to worship for a while where love lies
sleeping.... And then return no more."
She rose, signed him to remain seated, came around to where he sat,
and perched herself on the arm of his chair.
"If you don't mind," she said, "I shall smooth out that troubled
crease between your eyebrows." And she encircled his head with both
arms, and laid her smooth hands across his forehead. Then she touched
his hair lightly, with her lips.
"We are great sinners," she murmured, "are we not, my darling?"
And drew his head against her breast.
"Of what am I robbing her, Clive? Of the power to humiliate you,
make you unhappy. It is an honest theft.
"What else am I stealing from her? Not love, not gratitude, not duty,
nothing of tenderness, nor of pride nor sympathy. I take nothing,
then, from her. She has nothing for me to steal--unless it be the
plain gold ring she never wears.... And I prefer a new one--if,
indeed, I am to wear one."