Courtney counseled with a vase of jonquils. "No, I suppose you couldn't," she replied. "You don't know about wild, free—fierce—love— Do you?"
Helen's expression was of one appalled. "How can you talk that way?" she asked. "You're very strange to-day. You're not at all yourself."
"Self!" exclaimed Courtney, scornfully. "What is my self? What is your self? What is anybody's self?"
She no longer had the delusion of free will that makes us talk about bettering the race by "changing human nature from within"—the delusion that the individual is responsible, though obviously the social system and the other compelling external conditions move the individual as the showman his puppet. She, helpless in the whirl of strong emotions, was beginning to understand why, at the outset of her married life, instinct had bade her arrange all the circumstances round her and Richard so that they would be compelled to live the life in common, the life of the single common interest that holds love captive as the cage the bird. She was beginning to realize how like water self is in the grip of circumstances—how self is mill pond or torrent, pure or foul, or mixture of the two, according as circumstance commands. These demon impulses—they were not her self. Self was amazed onlooker at its own strange doings—was like helpless occupant of the carriage behind the runaway team.
When Helen spoke again, she showed that her thoughts were still lingering longingly where they must not, if Courtney was to be rid of the demons. "But if a man loves a woman," said Helen, "why shouldn't he be glad to give her honorable marriage?"
Courtney hesitated, dared. "She might be already married."
"Courtney!" And her horrified eyes told Courtney she had caught the intended hint that Basil was in love with some married woman. "It isn't possible!"
"Haven't such things happened?"
"Yes—but— No married woman a nice man would notice would ever think of another man than her husband."
"I don't know about a 'nice' woman," said Courtney, slowly. "But I can imagine that a human woman—if her husband neglected her, and chilled and killed her love——"