"I wouldn't ask you for those," Alan answered, carried away by the
torrent flood of her passionate speech. "I would wish you to guard
them. But, Herminia, just as a matter of form,--to prevent the
world from saying the cruel things the world is sure to say,--and
as an act of justice to you, and your children! A mere ceremony of
marriage; what more does it mean now-a-days than that we two agree
to live together on the ordinary terms of civilized society?"
Still Herminia shook her head. "No, no," she cried vehemently. "I
deny and decline those terms; they are part and parcel of a system
of slavery. I have learnt that the righteous soul should avoid all
appearance of evil. I will not palter and parley with the unholy
thing. Even though you go to a registry-office and get rid as far
as you can of every relic of the sacerdotal and sacramental idea,
yet the marriage itself is still an assertion of man's supremacy
over woman. It ties her to him for life, it ignores her
individuality, it compels her to promise what no human heart can be
sure of performing; for you can contract to do or not to do, easily
enough, but contract to feel or not to feel,--what transparent
absurdity! It is full of all evils, and I decline to consider it.
If I love a man at all, I must love him on terms of perfect
freedom. I can't bind myself down to live with him to my shame one
day longer than I love him; or to love him at all if I find him
unworthy of my purest love, or unable to retain it; or if I
discover some other more fit to be loved by me. You admitted the
other day that all this was abstractly true; why should you wish
this morning to draw back from following it out to its end in
practice?"
Alan was only an Englishman, and shared, of course, the inability
of his countrymen to carry any principle to its logical conclusion.
He was all for admitting that though things must really be so, yet
it were prudent in life to pretend they were otherwise. This is
the well-known English virtue of moderation and compromise; it has
made England what she is, the shabbiest, sordidest, worst-organized
of nations. So he paused for a second and temporized. "It's for
your sake, Herminia," he said again; "I can't bear to think of your
making yourself a martyr. And I don't see how, if you act as you
propose, you could escape martyrdom."