“I see that you suffer, and that makes it the more senseless. Now, I too ask what has induced you to come down here for all this time?”
“Because I had not earlier realised the horror of my position, you will say,” she said, with a look that was almost hostile. “We might have asked one another this question, and made this reproach, long ago, and might have ceased to meet here. Better late than never! To-day we must answer the question, What is it that we wanted and expected from one another?”
“Here is my irrefragable opinion—I want your love, and I give you mine. In love I recognise solely the principle of reciprocation, as it obtains in Nature. The law that I acknowledge is to follow unfettered our strong impression, to exchange happiness for happiness. This answers your question of why I came here. Is sacrifice necessary? Call it what you will there is no sacrifice in my scheme of life. I will no longer wander in this morass, and don’t understand how I have wasted my strength so long, certainly not for your sake, but essentially for my own. Here I will stay so long as I am happy, so long as I love. If my love grows cold, I shall tell you so, and go wherever Life leads me, without taking any baggage of duties and privileges with me; those I leave here in the depths below the precipice. You see, Vera, I don’t deceive you, but speak frankly. Naturally you possess the same rights as I. The mob above there lies to itself and others, and calls these his principles. But in secret and by cunning it acts in the same way, and only lays its ban on the women. Between us there must be equality. Is that fair or not?”
“Sophistry!” she said, shaking her head. “You know my principles, Mark.”
“To hang like stones round one another’s necks.”
“Love imposes duties, just as life demands them. If you had an old, blind mother you would maintain and support her, would remain by her. An honourable man holds it to be his duty and his pleasure too.”
“You philosophise, Vera, but you do not love.”
“You avoid my argument, Mark. I speak my opinion plainly, for I am a woman, not an animal, or a machine.”
“Your love is the fantastic, elaborate type described in novels. Is what you ask of me honourable? Against my convictions I am to go into a church, to submit to a ceremony which has no meaning for me. I don’t believe any of it and can’t endure the parson. Should I be acting logically or honourably?”
Vera hastily wrapped herself in her mantilla, and stood up to go.