She appeared to drink in his words.
“And what about the woman?” she asked; “the woman who loves a married man? Has she a right to do that? Has she a right, if the time should be opportune, to tell him so?”
“It’s the right of every woman to seek happiness where she can find it; to ask for it if she will; it’s her duty to take it when it’s offered to her, as I offer it to you to-night.”
“And, Steve, if a man’s wife is nothing to him, if she has no sympathy with him, if she’s a millstone about his neck, and he can have the love of another woman who is fond of him, oh, passionately fond of him, do you think it would be wrong for either of them to give himself to—to give herself unreservedly to the other? Do you, Steve? Do you?”
She was leaning toward him, eager, excited, her eyes glowing, her lips parted, her white teeth gleaming, her breast heaving with emotion. To the man who craved her she was wildly fascinating. He had never before seen her when she so appealed to every atom of his nature. Drawn irresistibly, he moved closer to her.
“Wrong?” he exclaimed. “Nothing under heaven would be more just. What are laws in the face of a passion like ours? In the new socialistic state there will be no such laws. And whatever would be right and of good conscience then is right and of good conscience now, in spite of all the capitalistic laws that were ever invented to oppress humanity.”
He moved still closer to her, and took up her hand which was hanging loosely at her side, and held it and caressed it. She made no remonstrance; she did not appear to notice what he was doing. It was plain to him that this woman who had held him in check and at bay for months was at last ready to yield to his importunities.
“That would be heavenly,” she said, and she seemed to be talking to herself rather than to him, “heavenly! But we would need to hide it; we would have to keep it secret—for a time.”
His face was so close to hers that she might have felt his breath upon her cheek.