pered to me, "There, there!"
as one whispers comfort to a child. . . . Suddenly she was kissing
me. She kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on my cheeks,
on my lips. She kissed me on my lips with lips that were
salt with tears. And I returned her kisses. . . .

Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart--looking at one another.

Section 4

It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly
out of my mind at the touch of Anna's lips. I loved Anna.

We went to the council of our group--commune it was then called--and
she was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne me
a son. We saw much of one another, and talked ourselves very close
together. My faithful friend she became and has been always, and
for a time we were passionate lovers. Always she has loved me and
kept my soul full of tender gratitude and love for her; always
when we met our hands and eyes clasped in friendly greeting, all
through our lives from that hour we have been each other's secure
help and refuge, each other's ungrudging fastness of help and sweetly
frank and open speech. . . . And after a little while my love and
desire for Nettie returned as though it had never faded away.

No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that could
be, but in the evil days of the world malaria, that would have been
held to be the most impossible thing. I should have had to crush
that second love out of my thoughts, to have kept it secret from
Anna, to have lied about it to all the world. The old-world theory
was there was only one love--we who float upon a sea of love find
that hard to understand. The whole nature of a man was supposed to
go out to the one girl or woman who possessed him, her whole nature
to go out to him. Nothing was left over--it was a discreditable
thing to have any overplus at all. They formed a secret secluded
system of two, two and such children as she bore him. All other
women he was held bound to find no beauty in, no sweetness, no
interest; and she likewise, in no other man. The old-time men and
women went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, like
beasts into little pits, and in these "homes" they sat down purposing
to love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of this
extravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed very
speedily out of their love, out of their conversation, all pride
out of their common life. To permit each other freedom was blank
dishon