"Then it ought never to get married," she said. "We tried marriage once on the basis of husband and wife being absolute strangers to each other, and at cross purposes." She paused; he did not suspect it was to steady her constantly endangered self-control. "And," she added, "I shall never try that kind of marriage again. Passion is a better kindler than worldliness, but it is just as poor fuel."
"Neva!" he exclaimed.
"I couldn't be merely your mistress, Horace. I'd want you, and I'd want you to take me, all of me. I'd want it to be our life, and not merely an episode in our life. Can't you see what would come afterwards—when you had grown calm about me—and I about you? Can't you see that you'd turn back to your business and prostitute yourself for money, while I'd turn perhaps to luxury and show and prostitute myself to you for the means to exhibit myself? Don't you see it on every side, there in New York—the traffic in the souls of men and women viler than any on the sidewalks at night—the brazen faces of the men, flaunting their shame, the brazen faces of the women, the so-called wives, flaunting their shame?"
"But you could never be like them," he protested. "Never!"
"As strong women as I, stronger, have been dragged down. No human being can resist the slow, steady, insidious seduction of his daily surroundings."
"I don't understand this at all, Neva," he said, though his ill-concealed anger showed that he did. Indeed, so angry was he that he was almost forgetting his own warnings to himself of the injustice of holding her responsible for anything she said in her obviously unstrung condition. He asked, "What have you to do with that sort of woman?" He hesitated, forced himself to go boldly on. "Why do you compare me to those men? I do not degrade myself."
She did not answer immediately, but looked away across the beds of blooming flowers. When she began again, she seemed calmer, under better control. "All the time I was in New York," she said, "the life there—the real life of money getting and money spending—never touched me personally until toward the last. Then—I saw what it really meant, saw it so plainly that I can't ever again hide the truth from myself. And since I came away—out here—where it's calm, and one thinks of things as they are—where father and the other way of living and acting toward one's fellow beings, took strong hold of me——"
"But, Neva—you——"
"Please, let me finish," she begged, all excitement once more. "It's so hard to say—so much harder than you think. But I must—must—must let you see what kind of woman I am, who it is you've asked to be your wife. As I remember my acquaintances in New York, our friends, do you know what I always feel? I remember their palaces, their swarms of servants, their jewels, their luxuries, the food they eat, the wine they drink, all of it; and I wonder just whose dollar was stolen to help pay for this or that luxury, just who is in want, how many are in want, that that carriage might roll or the other automobile go darting about. You know the men steal it; they don't know from whom, and so they can brazen it out to themselves."
"That is harsh—too harsh, Neva!"