"It was then, while living with my dear friend Kate, whom I sometimes helped in the work she did out, that I met my first, my last, my truest lover and friend, Terry. We met just at the right moment. I was filled with rebellion at the powers that were crushing me, breaking me, without realising why, or how, or what I might make of myself, when he came along and taught me in his own quiet and gentle convincing way how cruel and unjust is this scheme of things, and pointed out to me the cruelty and tyranny of my parents and of all society. He showed me that marriage such as I had contemplated was a bad form of prostitution, and he told me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once, but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my parents. My conceptions of freedom were crude, but I began to feel that my revolt was just, and was based upon the terrible injustice whereby the many must toil so that the few may live in splendour. I will not weary you with all the details of the things I learned at that time from Terry. To you it might seem very raw and crude, and you no doubt have read some of the pamphlets written by socialists and anarchists dealing with the labour question in all of its aspects. But to me these ideas were quite new and they seemed grand and noble.
"And Terry revealed to me, too, almost at once, the great inspiring fact that there is such a thing as beauty of thought—that there is poetry and art and literature. This, too, of course, came little by little, but do you wonder I loved a man who showed me a new world and who taught me I was not bad? He put good books into my hands, and to my grateful joy I found I liked these books better than the trash I had hitherto read.
"I felt so much better, after seeing so much of Terry, that I decided to go to work again. Terry was against this. 'Try it,' he said, 'But I assure you you don't need to work. I have tried doing without work for many years, it is much easier than it seems.' Nevertheless I got a job in a bicycle factory, but I only stayed a few days. It seemed like a stale existence to me! And besides, I was in love and wanted to be with Terry all the time. 'By God,' I said to him that night, 'you are right! I'll never work again.'
"My friend Gertrude, the girl with whom I had intended to go in the last reckless experiment, came to Terry's flat to see me, and get me to go with her. I had thought, after I gave up work, that Terry might offer me marriage, but he told me quite frankly that it was against his principles to marry anybody. I was a little hurt and astonished at this, but as I was very much in love and was already beginning to imbibe his ideas, it did not matter so very much to me.
"So, when Gertrude came, I led her to Terry and asked him what he thought about her plan. He said to us: 'The kind of prostitution you contemplate is no worse than the kind often called marriage. Selling your body for a lifetime is perhaps worse than selling it for an hour or for a day. But the immediate result of this kind of prostitution which you plan is very terrible practically. It generally leads to frightful diseases which will waste your bodies and perhaps injure your minds. The girls you envy are not always as happy, gay, and careless as they seem. It is part of their business to seem so, but they are not, or only so for a very short time. Perhaps you will be better off so than in domestic drudgery. It is a choice of evils, but if you are very brave and courageous you may perhaps get along without either. But if forced to one or the other, I recommend prostitution. It may be worse for you but, as a protest, it is better for society, in the long run.'
"He pictured to us as truly as he could the life of the street-walker; he did not seem to think that morally it was worse than any other life under our social organisation, but he did not make it seem attractive; nor did he make the life of the domestic servant or factory-girl seem attractive. He seemed to feel that one might look on prostitution as, under the circumstances, a grim duty—but it was certainly grim.
"We were rather incredulous at the picture Terry had drawn of the life we had resolved to lead. Gertrude turned up her pretty little nose and said it would not be like that with her. We talked about it all that day and night; and Gertrude decided to have a try at it, while I was undecided. I was somewhat piqued at Terry's attitude. I had expected him to oppose my plan, to do all in his power to prevent it. But I did not understand him. He knew that if I were determined, nothing would prevent me, and all he could do was to give us a faithful picture of what such a life would be.
"Things were happening of which we were ignorant for a time, but which helped to settle our immediate problem. I had often been seen going into Terry's flat, and this was food for gossip. It was said that Terry had started a bad house, and had done so in the flat belonging to his family, who were in the country at the time. These stories reached my mother's ears, and also were told to Terry's mother and sisters, and the mischief began. I was forbidden ever to cross my mother's threshold again, and he was requested to leave the home of his virtuous sisters which he had polluted and contaminated by his debaucheries with that immoral person, myself."
Marie omitted, in the above letter, the details of the split with the two families. It seems that Terry had, on hearing about the "rumours," gone to his family, then near Chicago, and presented to them his philosophy of life; also his determination not to give up Marie, and not to marry her. It was then that the last rung was put in the ladder of his family crucifixion, as he would call it. It was then that his mother "basely deserted him;" and Terry left for good, rejecting the money offered him.
"I passed them up," he said, scornfully, "and after spending the night in the lodging-house, I beat my way back to Chicago. I had been gone several days, and when I got back to the flat, where I went only to get Marie and clear out for God knows where, I found her gone, and no apparent way of finding her address. I went to see her mother, and had an awful scene with her. The violent woman was in hysterics and, after a long dispute, implored me to find her daughter. 'I'll find her,' I replied, 'for myself,' and left.