“Why, of course they do,” Bertram answered confidently.  “That’s not matter of opinion now; it’s matter of demonstration.  The worst of them all in their present complicated state are the ones that concern marriage and the other hideous sex-taboos.  They seem to have been among the earliest human abuses; for marriage arises from the stone-age practice of felling a woman of another tribe with a blow of one’s club, and dragging her off by the hair of her head to one’s own cave as a slave and drudge; and they are still the most persistent and cruel of any—­so much so, that your own people, as you know, taboo even the fair and free discussion of this the most important and serious question of life and morals.  They make it, as we would say at home, a refuge for enforced ignorance.  For it’s well known that early tribes hold the most superstitious ideas about the relation of men to women, and dread the most ridiculous and impossible evils resulting from it; and these absurd terrors of theirs seem to have been handed on intact to civilised races, so that for fear of I know not what ridiculous bogey of their own imaginations, or dread of some unnatural restraining deity, men won’t even discuss a matter of so much importance to them all, but, rather than let the taboo of silence be broken, will allow such horrible things to take place in their midst as I have seen with my eyes for these last six or seven weeks in your cities.  O Frida, you can’t imagine what things—­for I know they hide them from you:  cruelties of lust and neglect and shame such as you couldn’t even dream of; women dying of foul disease, in want and dirt deliberately forced upon them by the will of your society; destined beforehand for death, a hateful lingering death—­a death more disgusting than aught you can conceive—­in order that the rest of you may be safely tabooed, each a maid intact, for the man who weds her.  It’s the hatefullest taboo of all the hateful taboos I’ve ever seen on my wanderings, the unworthiest of a pure or moral community.”

He shut his eyes as if to forget the horrors of which he spoke.  They were fresh and real to him.  Frida did not like to question him further.  She knew to what he referred, and in a dim, vague way (for she was less wise than he, she knew) she thought she could imagine why he found it all so terrible.

They walked on in silence a while through the deep, lush grass of the July meadow.  At last Bertram spoke again:  “Frida,” he said, with a trembling quiver, “I didn’t sleep last night.  I was thinking this thing over—­this question of our relations.”

“Nor did I,” Frida answered, thrilling through, responsive.  “I was thinking the same thing. . . .  And, Bertram, ’twas the happiest night I ever remember.”

Bertram’s face flushed rosy red, that native colour of triumphant love; but he answered nothing.  He only looked at her with a look more eloquent by far than a thousand speeches.