Herminia gazed at him fixedly; the dimples disappeared. Her voice was more serious now, and had nothing in it of pleading. “It isn’t like that that I want to draw you, Alan,” she answered gravely. “It isn’t those chords I want to play upon. I want to convince your brain, your intellect, your reason. You agree with me in principle. Why then, should you wish to draw back in practice?”
“Yes, I agree with you in principle,” Alan answered. “It isn’t there that I hesitate. Even before I met you, I had arrived at pretty much the same ideas myself, as a matter of abstract reasoning. I saw that the one way of freedom for the woman is to cast off, root and branch, the evil growth of man’s supremacy. I saw that the honourableness of marriage, the disgrace of free union, were just so many ignoble masculine devices to keep up man’s lordship; vile results of his determination to taboo to himself beforehand and monopolise for life some particular woman. I know all that; I acknowledge all that. I see as plainly as you do that sooner or later there must come a revolution. But, Herminia, the women who devote themselves to carrying out that revolution, will take their souls in their hands, and will march in line to the freeing of their sex through shame and calumny and hardships innumerable. I shrink from letting you, the woman that I love, bring that fate upon yourself; I shrink still more from being the man to aid and abet you in doing it.”
Herminia fixed her piercing eyes upon his face once more. Tears stood in them now. The tenderness of woman was awakened within her. “Dear Alan,” she said gently, “don’t I tell you I have thought long since of all that? I am prepared to face it. It is only a question of with whom I shall do so. Shall it be with the man I have instinctively loved from the first moment I saw him, better than all others on earth, or shall it be with some lesser? If my heart is willing, why should yours demur to it?”
“Because I love you too well,” Alan answered doggedly.
Herminia rose and faced him. Her hands dropped by her side. She was splendid when she stood so with her panting bosom. “Then you decide to say goodbye?” she cried, with a lingering cadence.
Alan seized her by both wrists, and drew her down to his side. “No, no, darling,” he answered low, laying his lips against hers. “I can never say goodbye. You have confessed you love me. When a woman says that, what can a man refuse her? From such a woman as you, I am so proud, so proud, so proud of such a confession; how could I ever cease to feel you were mine—mine—mine—wholly mine for a lifetime?”
“Then you consent?” Herminia cried, all aglow, half nestling to his bosom.
“I consent,” Alan answered, with profound misgivings. “What else do you leave open to me?”
Herminia made no direct answer; she only laid her head with perfect trust upon the man’s broad shoulder. “O Alan,” she murmured low, letting her heart have its way, “you are mine, then; you are mine. You have made me so happy, so supremely happy.”