“Only too well,” Herminia replied, in a very earnest mood.  “I have wrought it all out in my mind beforehand,—­covenanted with my soul that for women’s sake I would be a free woman.  Alan, whoever would be free must himself strike the blow.  I know what you will say,—­ what every man would say to the woman he loved under similar circumstances,—­’Why should you be the victim?  Why should you be the martyr?  Bask in the sun yourself; leave this doom to some other.’  But, Alan, I can’t.  I feel I must face it.  Unless one woman begins, there will be no beginning.”  She lifted his hand in her own, and fondled it in her turn with caressing tenderness.  “Think how easy it would be for me, dear friend,” she cried, with a catch in her voice, “to do as other women do; to accept the honorable marriage you offer me, as other women would call it; to be false to my sex, a traitor to my convictions; to sell my kind for a mess of pottage, a name and a home, or even for thirty pieces of silver, to be some rich man’s wife, as other women have sold it.  But, Alan, I can’t.  My conscience won’t let me.  I know what marriage is, from what vile slavery it has sprung; on what unseen horrors for my sister women it is reared and buttressed; by what unholy sacrifices it is sustained, and made possible.  I know it has a history, I know its past, I know its present, and I can’t embrace it; I can’t be untrue to my most sacred beliefs.  I can’t pander to the malignant thing, just because a man who loves me would be pleased by my giving way and would kiss me, and fondle me for it.  And I love you to fondle me.  But I must keep my proper place, the freedom which I have gained for myself by such arduous efforts.  I have said to you already, ’So far as my will goes, I am yours; take me, and do as you choose with me.’  That much I can yield, as every good woman should yield it, to the man she loves, to the man who loves her.  But more than that, no.  It would be treason to my sex; not my life, not my future, not my individuality, not my freedom.”

“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