legal
interposition did more harm than good. As you will find, equality
before the law gives absolute effect to the real inequality, and
chiefly through its coarsest element, superior physical force. The
liberty that is a necessary logical consequence of equality takes from
the woman her one natural safeguard--the man's need of her goodwill,
if not of her affection."

"In our world," I replied, "I always held that even slaves, so they be
household slaves, are secure against gross cruelty. The owner cannot
make life a burden to them without imperilling his own. To reduce the
question to its lowest terms--malice will always be a match for
muscle, and poison an efficient antidote to the _ferula_."

"So," rejoined Esmo, "our men have perceived, and consequently they
have excepted attempts to murder, as the women have excepted serious
bodily injury, from the general rule prohibiting appeals to a court of
law."

"And," said I, "are there many such appeals?"

"Not one in two years," he replied; "and for a simple reason. Our law,
as matter of course and of common sense, puts murder, attempted or
accomplished, on the same footing, and visits both with its supreme
penalty. Consequently, a wife detected in such an attempt is at her
husband's mercy; and if he consent to spare her life, she must submit
to any infliction, however it may transgress the covenanted limit. In
fact, if he find her out in such an attempt, he may do anything but
put her to death on his own authority."

"Still," I answered, "as long as she remains in the house, she must
have frequent opportunity of repeating her attempt at revenge; and to
live in constant fear of assassination would break down the strongest
nerves."

"Our physicians," he said, "are more skilful in antidotes than our
women in poisons, even when the latter have learned chemistry. No
poisonous plants are grown near our houses; and as wives never go out
alone, they have little chance of getting hold of any fatal drug. I
believe that very few attempts to poison are successful, and that many
women have suffered very severely on mere suspicion."

"And what," I asked, "is the legal definition of 'grave bodily
injury'?"

"Injury," he said, "of which serious traces remain at the end of
twenty-four days; the destruction of a limb, or the deprivation,
partial or total, of a sense. I have often thought bitterly," he
continued, "of that boasted logic and liberality of our laws under
which my