en for women and women for men is the very heart of
all our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modern
life that has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of men.
That is why we compete against one another so bitterly, refuse
association and generous co-operations, keep the struggle for existence
hard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women as they in their turn
would if they could hamper and subordinate the men--because each must
thoroughly have his own.

And I knew my own heart too well to have any faith in Justin and his
word. He was taking what he could, and his mind would never rest until
some day he had all. I had seen him only once, but the heavy and
resolute profile above his bent back and slender shoulders stuck in my
memory.

If he was cruel to Mary, I told her, or broke his least promise to her,
I should kill him.

Sec. 9

My distress grew rather than diminished in the days immediately before
her marriage, and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory, a
day of wandering and passionate unrest. My imagination tormented me with
thoughts of Justin as a perpetual privileged wooer.

Well, well,--I will not tell you, I will not write the ugly mockeries my
imagination conjured up. I was constantly on the verge of talking and
cursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched
fists. I was too stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or any
distraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of London all day.
In the morning I came near going to the church and making some
preposterous interruptions. And I remember discovering three or four
carriages adorned with white favors and a little waiting crowd outside
that extinguisher-spired place at the top of Regent Street, and
wondering for a moment or so at their common preoccupation, and then
understanding. Of course, another marriage! Of all devilish
institutions!

What was I to do with my life now? What was to become of my life? I can
still recall the sense of blank unanswerableness with which these
questions dominated my mind, and associated with it is an effect of
myself as a small human being, singular and apart, wandering through a
number of London landscapes. At one time I was in a great grey
smoke-rimmed autumnal space of park, much cut up by railings and worn by
cricket pitches, far away from any idea of the Thames, and in the
distance over the tops of trees I discovered perplexing