“Modern women! Modern with your tongues! Love should be free. Love should be above conventions. How often you’ve said it! And I with my real beliefs did not dare to tell you how I chose to carry out your phrases because I knew that you were only talking. Doing lip service to modernism! Easy, isn’t it? But before modernism—naked—you’d be horrified and pursing your shocked lips and running for veils.”
Horatia sank down in a chair and covered her face with her hands.
“My God,” cried Grace, “why shouldn’t I do as I please? Why should I say one thing and act another? If I know marriage is rotten why should I hold to its forms? Haven’t we all said marriage was archaic—love should be free?”
There was no answer.
“Come now, isn’t that one of the great Sunday afternoon subjects for discussion?”
Horatia nodded. “But this is different.”
“Why different?”
“Because it is furtive and hidden—don’t you see it’s—ugly?”
“It’s hidden because of just such cowards as you. You for whom I am not fit!”
“It’s not a question of fitness. I don’t condemn you, Grace. Perhaps you are right. Maybe I am cheap and cowardly. But I can’t—live with it.”