generous welcome that they
had accorded them. But had they seized the full meaning, the ulterior
bearings of this changed attitude in women, and the wider knowledge of
the world that it brought with it? Not so long ago it was an understood
thing that women should know nothing of the darker side of life; and
there was nothing dishonorable in a man keeping the woman he loved in
ignorance of the darker side of his own past, if such there were. But in
the greater knowledge that has come to women, and the anguish some of
them feel over the misery and degradation of their lost sisters, can
this attitude any longer be maintained without conscious deception?
"What would you say," I asked, "if the woman you loved with the whole
strength of your soul passed herself off as an undamaged article upon
you, and let you worship her as the very embodiment of all that is white
and pure, when something unspeakably sad and sinful had happened in her
past life? You know you would be half mad at the wrong done to you if
after marriage you found it out. And what are you going to do, I ask
some of you who are so careless as to the life you lead, are _you_ going
to pass yourself off as an undamaged article on the woman who loves and
worships you, and who gives herself so unreservedly to you that she
loses her very name and takes yours? Is it fair, is it honorable, is it
even manly? No, I see by your faces you are saying, 'I don't think it
is, I should have to confess.' Well, that is better than basing your
life on a dishonorable lie. But, alas! it is no way out of the misery.
At the very moment when you would give all you possess to be worthy of
that great love she gives you, you have to prove that you are unworthy;
and the whole of the only last gleam of Eden that is left to this poor
life of yours, the pure love of a man to a pure woman, is blotted out
with bitter and jealous tears; the trail of the serpent is over it all.
I know well that women can love, and love passionately, impure men; but
every woman will tell you that there is _a_ love that a woman can only
give to a man who has been faithful to her before marriage as well as
after; and for ever and for ever there will be a shut door at the very
heart of your Eden of which you have flung away the key, a love that
might have been yours had you kept yourself worthy of it. There is but
one way out of the difficulty, now that in the changed position of women
you can no longer honorably keep t