"Very often what is right," I said to her, apathetically. "When two love the crime is that they shall not wed. When they do not love, the crime is when they do wed."
"But without marriage," she hesitated, "the home—"
"It is the old question," I said. "The home is built on woman's virtue; but virtue is not the same where there is no tome, no property, where there is no society—it is an artificial thing, born of compromise, and grown stronger by custom of the ages of property-owning man."
I saw a horror come across her eyes.
"What do you say to me, John Cowles? That what a woman prizes is not right, is not good? No, that I shall not think!" She drew apart from me.
"Because you think just as you do, I love you," I said.
"Yet you say so many things. I have taken life as it came, just as other girls do, not thinking. It is not nice, it is not clean, that girls should study over these things. That is not right."
"No, that is not right," said I, dully.
"Then tell me, what is marriage—that one thing a girl dreams of all her life. Is it of the church?"
"It is not of the church," I said.