What was he to do? An ugly, hunted look came into his face and he
swung around and faced the girl beside him: "Athalie," he said, "will you go away with me and let them howl?"
"Dearest, how silly. I'll stay here with you and let them howl."
"I don't want you to face it--"
"I shall not turn my back on it. Oh, Clive, there are so many more
important things than what people may say about us!"
"You can't defy the world!"
"I'm not going to, darling. But I may possibly shock a few of the more
orthodox parasites that infest it."
"No girl can maintain that attitude."
"A girl can try.... And, if law and malice force me to become your
mistress, malice and law may answer for it; not I!"
"I shall have to answer for it."
"Dearest," she said with smiling tenderness, "you are still very, very
orthodox in your faith in folk-ways. That need not cause me any
concern, however. But, Clive, of the two pictures which seems
reasonable--your wife who is no wife; your mistress who is more and is
considered less?
"Don't think that I am speaking lightly of wifehood.... I desire it as
I desire motherhood. I was made for both. If the world will let me I
shall be both wife and mother. But if the world interferes to stultify
me, then, nevertheless I shall still be both, and the law can keep the
title it refuses me. I deny the right of man to cripple, mar, render
sterile my youth and womanhood. I deny the right of the world to
forbid me love, and its expression, as long as I harm no one by
loving. Clive, it would take a diviner law than man's notions of
divinity, to kill in me the right to live and love and bring the
living into life. And if I am forbidden to do it in the name of the
law, then I dare do it in the name of One who never turned his back on
little children--"
She ceased abruptly; and he saw her eyes suddenly blinded by tears: "Oh, Clive--if you only could have seen them--the little flower-like
faces and pleading arms around--my--neck--warm--Oh, sweet!--sweet
against my breast--"