“No,” said Lily, “I have not heard from him in years. He has never seen the boy. You see Jean is mine alone because even if the Governor wanted him he dares not risk a scandal. He is as much my own as if I had created him alone out of my own body. He belongs to me and to me alone, do you see? I can make him into what I will. I shall make him into a man who will know everything and be everything. He shall be stronger than I and cleverer. He is handsome enough. He is everything to me. A queen would be proud to have him for her son.”
As she spoke a light kindled in her eyes and a look of exultation spread over her face. It was an expression of passionate triumph.
“You see,” she added, “it is a wonderful thing to have some one who belongs to you alone, who loves you alone and no one else. He owns me and I own him. There is no one else who counts. If we were left alone on a desert island, we would be content.” The look faded slowly and gave place to a mocking smile that arched the corners of her red lips. “If I had married the Governor, the boy might have become anything.... I should have seen him becoming crude and common under my very eyes. I should have hated his father and I could have done nothing. As it is, his father is only a memory ... pleasant enough, a handsome man who loved me, but never owned me ... even for an instant ... not even the instant of my child’s conception!”
During this speech the manner of Mrs. Tolliver became more and more agitated. With each bold word a new wave of color swept her large face, until at the climax of Lily’s confession she was struck mute, rendered incapable of either thought or action. It was a long time before she recovered even a faint degree of her usual composure. At last she managed to articulate, “I don’t see, Lily, how you can say such things. I really don’t. The words would burn my throat!”
Her cousin’s smile was defiant, almost brazen. “You see, Cousin Hattie, I have lived among the French. With them such things are no more than food and drink ... except perhaps that they prefer love to everything else,” she added, with a mischievous twinkle in her dark eyes.
“And besides,” continued Mrs. Tolliver, “I don’t know what you mean. I’m sure Charles has never owned me.”
“No, my dear,” said Lily, “He never has. On the contrary it is you who have always owned him. It is always one thing or the other. The trouble is that at first women like to be owned.” She raised her hand. “Oh, I know. The Governor would have owned me sooner or later. There are some men who are like that. You know them at once. I know how my father owned my mother and you know as well as I that she was never a weak, clinging woman. If she had been as rich as I, she would have left him ... long ago. She could not because he owned her.”
“But that was different,” parried Mrs. Tolliver. “He was a foreigner.”
They were treading now upon that which in the family had been forbidden ground. No one discussed John Shane with his wife or children because they had kept alive for more than thirty years a lie, a pretense. John Shane had been accepted silently and unquestioningly as all that a husband should be. Now the manner of Mrs. Tolliver brightened visibly at the approach of an opening for which she had waited more years than she was able to count.
“But he was a man and she was a woman,” persisted Lily. “I know that most American women own their husbands, but the strange thing is that I could never have married a man whom I could own. You see that is the trouble with marriage. It is difficult to be rid of a husband.”