She answered him gravely. “Women in that respect are not so different to men. Judge me by yourself.”
“Oh, but there’s a world of difference,” he said, chilled by her words. “I am simply a vagabond, a wandering Bedouin, here to-day and over the hills and far away to-morrow.”
“I am also a wanderer,” she smiled. “We are both free beings who have broken away from the beaten path. We both earn our living, and claim our independence.”
“Yet the difference is this,” he reminded her, “that the world will shrug its shoulders at my actions, but will condemn yours.”
She made an impatient gesture. “Oh, that threadbare truism!” she said. “I have turned my back on the world, and I don’t care what it thinks. I act according to my principles, and in this sort of thing the first principle is very simple. If a woman is a thoughtful, responsible being, earning her own living, and able to lead her own life without being in the slightest degree dependent on the man of her choice, or on any other living soul, she is entitled to respond to the call of nature at that precious and rare moment when her heart tells her to do so. There should be no such thing as a different law for the man and for the woman: there should only be a different law for the self-supporting and the dependent. The sin is when a woman is a parasite.”
With that she took a header into the water, and he watched her gliding amidst the swaying tendrils of the sea-plants, like a sinuous mermaiden.
When she rose to the surface once more he dived in, and swam over to her, his face emerging but a few inches from hers. “Do you love me?” he asked, smiling amongst the bubbles.
“No, I hate you,” she replied, striking out towards the shore.
“Why?” he called after her.