Chapter 8.
A TALK WITH ELODIA.
"It behoveth us also to consider the nature of him that offendeth."--SENECA.
The longer I delayed my visit to Caskia, the more difficult it becamefor me to tear myself away from Thursia. You may guess the lodestarthat held me back. It was as if I were attached to Elodia by aninvisible chain which, alas! in no way hindered her free movements,because she was unconscious of its existence. Sometimes she treated mewith a charmingly frank _camaraderie_, and at other times her mannerwas simply, almost coldly, courteous,--which I very well knew to bedue to the fact that she was more than usually absorbed in herbusiness or official affairs; she was never cold for a purpose, anymore than she was fascinating for a purpose. She was singularlysincere, affecting neither smiles nor frowns, neither affability norseverity, from remote or calculating motives. In brief, she did notemploy her feminine graces, her sexpower, as speculating capital insocial commerce. The social conditions in Thursia do not demand thatwomen shall pose in a conciliatory attitude toward men--upon whosefavor their dearest privileges hang. Marriage not being an economicnecessity with them, they are released from certain sordid motiveswhich often actuate women in our world in their frantic efforts toavert the appalling catastrophe of missing a husband; and they are atliberty to operate their matrimonial campaigns upon other grounds. Ido not say higher grounds, because that I do not know. I only knowthat one base factor in the marriage problem,--the ignoble scheming tosecure the means of living, as represented in a husband,--iseliminated, and the spirit of woman is that much more free.
We men have a feeling that we are liable at any time to be entrappedinto matrimony by a mask of cunning and deceit, which heredity andlong practice enable women to use with such amazing skill that few canescape it. We expect to be caught with chaff, like fractious coltscoquetting with the halter and secretly not unwilling to be caught.
Another thing: woman's freedom to propose--which struck me asmonstrous--takes away the reproach of her remaining single; thesupposition being, as in the case of a bachelor, that it is a matterof choice with her. It saves her the dread of having it said that shehas never had an opportunity to marry.
Courtship in Thursia may lack some of the tantalizing uncertaintieswhich give it zest with us, but marriage also is robbed of many doubtsand misgivings. Still I could not accustom myself with any feeling ofcomfort to the situation there,--the idea of masculine pre-eminenceand womanly dependence being too thoroughly ingrained in my nature.
Elodia, of course, did many things and held many opinions of which Idid not approve. But I believed in her innate nobility, andattributed her defects to a pernicious civilization and a governmentwhich did not exercise its paternal right to cherish, and restrain,and protect, the weaker sex, as they should be cherished, andrestrained, and protected. And how charming and how reliable she was,in spite of her defects! She had an atomic weight upon which you coulddepend as upon any other known quantity. Her presence was a stimulusthat quickened the faculties and intensified the emotions. At least Imay speak for myself; she awoke new feelings and aroused new powerswithin me.
Her life had made her practical but not prosaic. She had imaginationand poetic feeling; there were times when her beautiful countenancewas touched with the grandeur of lofty thought, and again with theshifting lights of a playful humor, or the flashings of a keen butkindly wit. She had a laugh that mellowed the heart, as if she tookyou into her confidence. It is a mark of extreme favor when yoursuperior, or a beautiful woman, admits you to the intimacy of acordial laugh! Even her smiles, which I used to lie in wait for andoften tried to provoke, were not the mere froth of a light andcareless temperament; they had a significance like speech. Though shewas so busy, and though she knew so well how to make the momentscount, she could be idle when she chose, deliciously, luxuriouslyidle,--like one who will not fritter away his pence, but upon occasionspends his guineas handsomely. At the dinner hour she always gave usof her best. Her varied life supplied her with much material forconversation,--nothing worth noticing ever escaped her, in the lifeand conduct of people about her. She was fond of anecdote, and couldgarnish the simplest story with an exquisite grace.
Upon one of her idle days,--a day when Severnius happened not to be athome,--she took up her parasol in the hall after we had had luncheon,and gave me a glance which said, "Come with me if you like," and wewent out and strolled through the grounds together. Her manner had nota touch of coquetry; I might have been simply another woman, shemight have been simply another man. But I was so stupid as to essaylittle gallantries, such as had been, in fact, a part of my youthfuleducation; she either did not observe them or ignored them, I couldnot tell which. Once I put out my hand to assist her over aridiculously narrow streamlet, and she paid no heed to the gesture,but reefed her skirts, or draperies, with her own unoccupied hand andstepped lightly across. Again, when we were about to ascend an abrupthill, I courteously offered her my arm.
"O, no, I thank you!" she said; "I have two, which balance me verywell when I climb."
"You are a strange woman," I exclaimed with a blush.
"Am I?" she said, lifting her brows. "Well, I suppose--or rather yousuppose--that I am the product of my ancestry and my training."
"You are, in some respects," I assented; and then I added, "I haveoften tried to fancy what effect our civilization would have had uponyou."
"What effect do you think it would have had?" she asked, with quite anunusual--I might say earthly--curiosity.
"I dare not tell you," I replied, thrilling with the felicity of atalk so personal,--the first I had ever had with her.
"Why not?" she demanded, with a side glance at me from under hergold-fringed shade.
"It would be taking too great a liberty."
"But if I pardon that?" There was an archness in her smile which wasaltogether womanly. What a grand opportunity, I thought, for sayingsome of the things I had so often wanted to say to her! but Ihesitated, turning hot and then cold.
"Really," I said, "I cannot. I should flatter you, and you would notlike that."
For the first time, I saw her face crimson to the temples.
"That would be very bad taste," she replied; "flattery being the lastresort--when it is found that there is nothing in one to compliment.Silence is better; you have commendable tact."
"Pardon my stupid blunder!" I cried; "you cannot think I meant that!Flattery is exaggerated, absurd, unmeaning praise, and no praise, thehighest, the best, could do you justice, could--"
She broke in with a disdainful laugh:
"A woman can always compel a pretty speech from a man, you see,--evenin Mars!"
"You did not compel it," I rejoined earnestly, "if I but dared,--ifyou would allow me to tell you what I think of you, how highly Iregard--"
She made a gesture which cut short my eloquence, and we walked on insilence.
Whenever there has been a disturbance in the moral atmosphere, thereis nothing like silence to restore the equilibrium. I, watchingfurtively, saw the slight cloud pass from her face, leaving theintelligent serenity it usually wore. But still she did not speak.However, there was nothing ominous in that, she was never troubledwith an uneasy desire to keep conversation going.
On top of the hill there were benches, and we sat down. It was one ofthose still afternoons in summer when nature seems to be taking asiesta. Overhead it was like the heart of a rose. The soft, white,cottony clouds we often see suspended in our azure ether, floated--assoft, as white, as fleecy--in the pink skies of Mars.
Elodia closed her parasol and laid it across her lap and leaned herhead back against the tree in whose shade we were. It was an acutepleasure, a rapture indeed, to sit so near to her and alone with her,out of hearing of all the world. But she was calmly unconscious, hergaze wandering dreamily through half-shut lids over the widelandscape, which included forests and fields and meadows, and manywindings of the river, for we had a high point of observation.
I presently broke t
he silence with a bold, perhaps an inexcusablequestion,
"Elodia, do you intend ever to marry?"
It was a kind of challenge, and I held myself rigid, waiting for heranswer, which did not come immediately. She turned her eyes toward meslowly without moving her head, and our glances met and graduallyretreated, as two opposing forces might meet and retreat, neitherconquering, neither vanquished. Hers went back into space, and shereplied at last as if to space,--as if the question had come, not fromme alone, but from all the voices that urge to matrimony.
"Why should I marry?"
"Because you are a woman," I answered promptly.
"Ah!" her lip curled with a faint smile, "your reason is very general,but why limit it at all, why not say because I am one of a pair whichshould be joined together?"
The question was not cynical, but serious; I scrutinized her faceclosely to make sure of that before answering.
"I know," I replied, "that here in Mars there is held to be nodifference in the nature and requirements of the sexes, but it is afalse hypothesis, there is a difference,--a vast difference! all myknowledge of humanity, my experience and observation, prove it."
"Prove it to you, no doubt," she returned, "but not to me, because myexperience and observation have been the reverse of yours. Will youkindly tell me," she added, "why you think I should wish to marry anymore than a man,--or what reasons can be urged upon a woman more thanupon a man?"
An overpowering sense of helplessness fell upon me,--as when one hasreached the limits of another's understanding and is unable to clearthe ground for further argument.
"O, Elodia! I cannot talk to you," I replied. "It is true, as you say,that our conclusions are based upon diverse premises; we are so wideapart in our views on this subject that what I would say must seem toyou the merest cant and sentiment."
"I think not; you are an honest man," she rejoined with an encouragingsmile, "and I am greatly interested in your philosophy of marriage."
I acknowledged her compliment.
"Well," I began desperately, letting the words tumble out as theywould, "it is woman's nature, as I understand it, to care a great dealabout being loved,--loved wholly and entirely by one man who is worthyof her love, and to be united to him in the sacred bonds of marriage.To have a husband, children; to assume the sweet obligations offamily ties, and to gather to herself the tenderest and purestaffections humanity can know, is surely, indisputably, the best, thehighest, noblest, province of woman."
"And not of man?"
"These things mean the same to men, of course," I replied, "though inlesser degree. It is man's office--with us--to buffet with the world,to wrest the means of livelihood, of comfort, luxury, from thegrudging hand of fortune. It is the highest grace of woman that sheaccepts these things at his hands, she honors him in accepting, as hehonors her in bestowing."
I was aware that I was indulging in platitudes, but the platitudes ofEarth are novelties in Mars.
Her eyes took a long leap from mine to the vague horizon line. "It isvery strange," she said, "this distinction you make, I cannotunderstand it at all. It seems to me that this love we are talkingabout is simply one of the strong instincts implanted in our commonnature. It is an essential of our being. Marriage is not, it is asocial institution; and just why it is incumbent upon one sex morethan upon the other, or why it is more desirable for one sex than theother, is inconceivable to me. If either a man, or a woman, desiresthe ties you speak of, or if one has the vanity to wish to found arespectable family, then, of course, marriage is a necessity,--made soby our social and political laws. It is a luxury we may have if we paythe price."
I was shocked at this cold-blooded reasoning, and cried, "O, how can awoman say that! have you no tenderness, Elodia? no heart-need of theseties and affections,--which I have always been taught are so preciousto woman?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and, leaning forward a little, clasped herhands about her knees.
"Let us not make it personal," she said; "I admitted, that thesethings belong to our common nature, and I do not of course exceptmyself. But I repeat that marriage is a convention, and--I am notconventional."
"As to that," I retorted, "all the things that pertain tocivilization, all the steps which have ever been taken in thedirection of progress, are conventions: our clothing, our houses, ourreligions, arts, our good manners. And we are bound to accept every'convention' that makes for the betterment of society, as though itwere a revelation from God."
I confess that this thought was the fruit of my brief intercourse withthe Caskians, who hold that there is a divine power continuallyoperating upon human consciousness,--not disclosing miracles, butenlarging and perfecting human perceptions. I was thinking of thiswhen Elodia suddenly put the question to me:
"Are you married?"
"No, I am not," I replied. The inquiry was not agreeable to me; itimplied that she had been hitherto altogether too indifferent as to my"eligibility,"--never having concerned herself to ascertain the factbefore.
"Well, you are perhaps older than I am," she said, "and you havedoubtless had amours?"
I was as much astounded by the frankness of this inquiry as you canbe, and blushed like a girl. She withdrew her eyes from my face with afaint smile and covered the question by another:
"You intend to marry, I suppose?"
"I do, certainly," I replied, the resolution crystallizing on theinstant.
She drew a long sigh. "Well, I do not, I am so comfortable as I am."She patted the ground with her slipper toe. "I do not wish to imposenew conditions upon myself. I simply accept my life as it comes to me.Why should I voluntarily burden myself with a family, and all thepossible cares and sorrows which attend the marriage state! If I casta prophetic eye into the future, what am I likely to see?--Let us say,a lovely daughter dying of some frightful malady; an idolized sonsquandering my wealth and going to ruin; a husband in whom I no longerdelight, but to whom I am bound by a hundred intricate ties impossibleto sever. I think I am not prepared to take the future on trust to sogreat an extent! Why should the free wish for fetters? Affection andsympathy are good things, indispensable things in fact,--but I findthem in my friends. And for this other matter: this need of love,passion, sentiment,-which is peculiarly ephemeral in its impulses,notwithstanding that it has such an insistent vitality in the humanheart,--may be satisfied without entailing such tremendousresponsibilities."
I looked at her aghast; did she know what she was saying; did she meanwhat her words implied?
"You wrong yourself, Elodia," said I; "those are the sentiments, thearguments, of a selfish person, of a mean and cowardly spirit. And youhave none of those attributes; you are strong, courageous, generous--"
"You mistake me," she interrupted, "I am entirely selfish; I do notwish to disturb my present agreeable pose. Tell me, what is it thatusually prompts people to marry?"
"Why, love, of course," I answered.
"Well, you are liable to fall in love with my maid--"
"Not after having seen her mistress!" I ejaculated.
"If she happens to possess a face or figure that draws your masculineeye," she went on, the rising color in her cheek responding to myaudacious compliment; "though there may be nothing in common betweenyou, socially, intellectually, or spiritually. What would be theresult of such a marriage, based upon simple sex-love?"
I had known many such marriages, and was familiar with the results,but I did not answer. We tacitly dropped the subject, and our twominds wandered away as they would, on separate currents.
She was the first to break this second silence.
"I can conceive of a marriage," she said, "which would not becomeburdensome, any more than our best friendships become burdensome.Beside the attraction on the physical plane--which I believe is verynecessary--there should exist all the higher affinities. I should wantmy husband to be my most delightful companion, able to keep my likingand to command my respect and confidence as I should hope to his. ButI fear that is ideal."
"The ideal is only the highest real," I answered, "the ideal is alwayspossible."
"Remotely!" she said with a laugh. "The chances are many against it."
"But even if one were to fall short a little in respect to husband orwife, I have often observed that there are compensations springing outof the relation, in other ways," I returned.
"You mean children? O, yes, that is true, when all goes well. I willtell you," she added, her voice dropping to the tone one instantlyrecognizes as confidential, "that I am educating several children insome of our best schools, and that I mean to provide for them withsufficient liberality when they come of age. So, you see, I havethrown hostages to fortune and shall probably reap a harvest ofgratitude,--in place of filial affection."
She laughed with a touch of mockery.
I suppose every one is familiar with the experience of havingthings--facts, bits of knowledge,--"come" to him, as we say. Somethingcame to me, and froze the marrow in my bones.
"Elodia," I ventured, "you asked me a very plain question a momentago, will you forgive me if I ask you the same,--have you had amours?"
The expression of her face changed slightly, which might have been dueto the expression of mine.
"We have perhaps grown too frank with each other," she said, "but youare a being from another world, and that must excuse us,--shall it?"
I bowed, unable to speak.
"One of the children I spoke of, a little girl of six, is my ownnatural child."
She made this extraordinary confession with her glance fixed steadilyupon mine.
I am a man of considerable nerve, but for a moment the world was darkto me and I had the sensation of one falling from a great height. Andthen suddenly relief came to me in the thought, She is not to bejudged by the standards that measure morality in my country! When Icould command my voice again I asked:
"Does this little one know that she is your child,--does any one elseknow?"
"Certainly not," she answered in a tone of surprise, and then with anironical smile, "I have treated you to an exceptional confidence. Itis a matter of etiquette with us to keep these things hidden."
As I made no response she added:
"Is it a new thing to you for a parent not to acknowledge illegitimatechildren?"
"Even the lowest class of mothers we have on Earth do not oftenabandon their offspring," I replied.
"Neither do they here," she said. "The lowest class have nothing togain and nothing to lose, and consequently there is no necessity thatthey should sacrifice their natural affections. In this respect, thelower classes are better off than we aristocrats."
"You beg the question," I returned; "you know what I mean! I shouldnot have thought that you, Elodia, could ever be moved by suchunworthy considerations--that you would ever fear the world'sopinions! you who profess manly qualities, the noblest of which iscourage!"
"Am I to understand by that," she said, "that men on your planetacknowledge their illegitimate progeny, and allow them the privilegesof honored sons and daughters?"
Pushed to this extremity, I could recall but a single instance,--butone man whose courage and generosity, in a case of the kind underdiscussion, had risen to the level of his crime. I related to her thestory of his splendid and prolonged life, with its one blot of earlysin, and its grace of practical repentance. And upon the other hand, Itold her of the one distinguished modern woman, who has had thehardihood to face the world with her offenses in her hands, as onemight say.
"Are you not rather unjust to the woman?" she asked. "You speak of theman's acknowledgment of his sin as something fine, and you seem toregard hers as simply impudent."
"Because of the vast difference between the moral attitude of thetwo," I rejoined. "He confessed his error and took his punishment withhumility; she slaps society in the face, and tries to make her geniusglorify her misdeeds."
"Possibly society is to blame for that, by setting her at bay. If Ihave got the right idea about your society, it is as unrelenting tothe one sex as it is indulgent to the other. Doubtless it was readywith open arms to receive back the offending, repentant man, but wouldit not have set its foot upon the woman's neck if she had given it thechance, if she had knelt in humility as he did? A tree bears fruitafter its kind; so does a code of morals. Gentleness and forgivenessbreed repentance and reformation, and harshness begets defiance." Sheadded with a laugh, "What a spectacle your civilization would presentif all the women who have sinned had the genius and the spirit of aBernhardt!"
"Or all the men had the magnanimity of a Franklin," I retorted.
"True!" she said, and after a moment she continued, "I am not so greatas the one, nor have I the 'effrontery' of the other. But it is not somuch that I lack courage; it is rather, perhaps, a delicateconsideration for, and concession to, the good order of society."
I regarded her with amazement, and she smiled.
"Really, it is true," she said. "I believe in social order and I payrespect to it--"
"By concealing your own transgressions," I interpolated.
"Well, why not? Suppose I and my cult--a very large class of eminentlyrespectable sinners!--should openly trample upon this time-honoredconvention; the result would eventually be, no doubt, a moral anarchy.We have a very clear sense of our responsibility to the masses. Wemake the laws for their government, and we allow ourselves to seem tobe governed by them also,--so that they may believe in them. We buildchurches and pay pew rent, though we do not much believe in thereligious dogmas. And we leave off wine when we entertain temperancepeople."
"But why do you do these things?" I asked; "to what end?"
"Simply for the preservation of good order and decency. You must knowthat the pleasant vices of an elegant person are brutalities in theuncultured. The masses have no tact or delicacy, they do notcomprehend shades, and refinements of morals and manners. They canunderstand exoteric but not esoteric philosophy. We have really twocodes of laws."
"I think it would be far better for the masses--whom you so highlyrespect!--" I said, "if you were to throw off your masks and stand outbefore them just as you are. Let moral anarchy come if it must, andthe evil be consumed in its own flame; out of its ashes the ph[oe]nixalways rises again, a nobler bird."
"How picturesque!" she exclaimed; "do you know, I think your languagemust be rich in imagery. I should like to learn it."
I did not like the flippancy of this speech, and made no reply.
After a brief pause she added, "There is truth in what you say, a ballmust strike hard before it can rebound. Society must be fearfullyoutraged before it turns upon the offender, if he be a person ofconsequence. But you cannot expect the offender to do his worst, todash himself to pieces, in order that a better state of morals may bebuilt upon his ruin. We have not yet risen to such sublimity ofdevotion and self-sacrifice. I think the fault and the remedy both,lie more with the good people,--the people who make a principle ofmoral conduct. They allow us to cajole them into silence, they wink atour misdeeds. They know what we are up to, but they conceal theknowledge,--heaven knows why!--as carefully as we do our vices.Contenting themselves with breaking out in general denunciations whichnobody accepts as personal rebuke."
This was such a familiar picture that for a moment I fancied myselfupon the Earth again. And I thought, what a difficult position thegood have to maintain everywhere, for having accepted the championshipof a cause whose standards are the highest and best! We expect them tobe wise, tender, strong, just, stern, merciful, charitable,unyielding, forgiving, sinless, fearless.
"Elodia," I said presently, "you can hardly understand what a shockthis--this conversation has been to me. I started out with saying thatI had often tried to fancy what our civilization might have done foryou. I see more clearly now. You are the victim of the harshest andcruelest assumption that has ever been upheld concerning woman,--thather nature is no finer, holier than man's. I have reverenced womanhoodall my life as the highest and purest thing under heaven, and I will,I must, hold fas
t to that faith, to that rock on which the besttraditions of our Earth are founded."
"Do your women realize what they have got to live up to?" she askedironically.
"There are things in men which offset their virtues," I returned, injustice to my own sex. "Where men are strong, women are gentle, wherewomen are faithful, men are brave, and so on."
"How charming to have the one nature dovetail into the other soneatly!" she exclaimed. "I seem to see a vision, shall I tell it toyou,--a vision of your Earth? In the Beginning, you know that is theway in which all our traditions start out, there was a great heap ofQualities stacked in a pyramid upon the Earth. And the human creatureswere requested to step up and help themselves to such as suited theirtastes. There was a great scramble, and your sex, having someadvantages in the way of muscle and limb,--and not having yet acquiredthe arts of courtesy and gallantry for which you are now sodistinguished,--pressed forward and took first choice. Naturally youselected the things which were agreeable to possess in themselves, andthe exercise of which would most redound to your glory; such virtuesas chastity, temperance, patience, modesty, piety, and some minorgraces, were thrust aside and eventually forced upon the weakersex,--since it was necessary that all the Qualities should be used inorder to make a complete Human Nature. Is not that a pretty fable?"
She arose and shook out her draperies and spread her parasol. Therewere crimson spots in her cheeks, I felt that I had angered her,--andon the other hand, she had outraged my finest feelings. But we wereboth capable of self-government.
"It must be near dinner time," she said, quietly.
I walked along by her side in silence.
As we again crossed the brooklet, she stooped and picked a long racemeof small white, delicately odorous flowers, and together we analyzedthem, and I recognized them as belonging to our family of _convallariamajalis_. This led to a discussion of comparative botany on the twoplanets,--a safe, neutral topic. In outward appearance our mutualattitude was unchanged. Inwardly, there had been to me something likethe moral upheaval of the universe. For the first time I hadmelancholy symptoms of nostalgia, and passionately regretted that Ihad ever exchanged the Earth for Mars.
Severnius had returned. After dinner he invited me out onto theveranda to smoke a cigar,--he was very particular not to fill thehouse with tobacco smoke. Elodia, he said, did not like the odor. Iwondered whether he took such pains out of consideration for her, orwhether he simply dreaded her power to retaliate with her obnoxiousvapor. The latter supposition, however, I immediately repudiated asbeing unjust to him; he was the gentlest and sweetest of men.
My mind was so full of the subject Elodia and I had discussed that Icould not forbear repeating my old question to him:
"Tell me, my friend," I entreated, "do you in your inmost soul believethat men and women have one common nature,--that women are no betterat all than men, and that men may, if they will, be as pure as--wellas women ought to be?"
Severnius smiled. "If you cannot find an answer to your first questionhere in Paleveria, I think you may in any of the savage countries,where I am quite positive the women exhibit no finer qualities thantheir lords. And for a very conclusive reply to your secondquestion,--go to Caskia!"
"Does the same idea of equality, or likeness rather, exist in Caskiathat prevails here?" I asked.
"O, yes," said he, "but their plane of life is so much higher. Icannot but believe in the equality" he added, "bad as things are withus. We hope that we are progressing onward and upward; all ourteaching and preaching tend toward that, as you may find in ourchurches and schools, and in our literature. I am so much of anoptimist as to believe that we are getting better and better all thetime. One evidence is that there is less of shamelessness than thereused to be with respect to some of the grossest offences againstdecency. People do not now glory in their vices, they hide them."
"Then you approve of concealment!" I exclaimed.
"It is better than open effrontery, it shows that the moral power insociety is the stronger; that it is making the way of the transgressorhard, driving him into dark corners."
I contrasted this in my mind with Elodia's theory on the same subject.The two differed, but there was a certain harmony after all.
Severnius added, apropos of what had gone before, "It does not seemfair to me that one half of humanity should hang upon the skirts ofthe other half; it is better that we should go hand in hand, eventhough our progress is slow."
"But that cannot be," I returned; "there are always some that mustbear the burden while others drag behind."
"O, certainly; that is quite natural and right," he assented. "Thestrong should help the weak. What I mean is that we should not throwthe burden upon any particular class, or allow to any particular classspecial indulgences. That--pardon me!--is the fault I find with yourcivilization; you make your women the chancellors of virtue, and claimfor your sex the privilege of being virtuous or not, as you choose."He smiled as he added, "Do you know, your loyalty and tender devotionto individual women, and your antagonistic attitude toward women ingeneral--on the moral plane--presents the most singular contrast to mymind!"
"No doubt," I said; "it is a standing joke with us. We are better inthe sample than in the whole piece. As individuals, we are woman'sdevoted slaves, and lovers, and worshipers; as a political body, weare her masters, from whom she wins grudging concessions; as a socialfactor, we refuse her dictation."
I was not in a mood to discuss the matter further. I was sick at heartand angry,--not so much with Elodia as with the conditions that hadmade her what she was, a woman perfect in every other respect, butdevoid of the one supreme thing,--the sense of virtue. She was now tome simply a splendid ruin, a temple without holiness. I went up to myroom and spent the night plunged in the deepest sadness I had everknown. When one is suffering an insupportable agony, he catches at theflimsiest delusions for momentary relief. He says to himself, "Myfriend is not dead!" "My beloved is not false!" So I tried to cheatmyself. I argued, "Why, this is only a matter of education with me,surely; how many women, with finer instincts than mine, have loved andmarried men of exactly the same stamp as Elodia!" But I put away thethought with a shudder, feeling that it would be a far more dreadfulthing to relax my principles and to renounce my faith in woman'spurity than to sacrifice my love. The tempter came in another form.Suppose she should repent? But my soul revolted. No, no; Jesus mightpardon a Magdalene, but I could not. Elodia was dead; Elodia had neverbeen! That night I buried her; I said I would never look upon her faceagain. But the morning brought resurrection. How hard a thing it is todestroy love!