And now I had to acknowledge the paramount importance of those ‘dream-nothings’ out of which all true living must come. I had to realize that my marriage was nothing but the mere mating of the male and female animal,—a coarse bodily union, and no more;—that all the finer and deeper emotions which make a holy thing of human wedlock, were lacking,—the mutual respect, the trusting sympathy,—the lovely confidence of mind with mind,—the subtle inner spiritual bond which no science can analyse, and which is so much closer and stronger than the material, and knits immortal souls together when bodies decay—these things had no existence, and never would exist between my wife and me. Thus, as far as I was concerned, there was a strange blankness in the world,—I was thrust back upon myself for comfort and found none. What should I do with my life, I wondered drearily! Win fame,—true fame,—after all? With Sibyl’s witch-eyes mocking my efforts?—never! If [p 305] I had ever had any gifts of creative thought within me, she would have killed it!
The hour was over,—the boatman rowed me in to land, and I paid and dismissed him. The sun had completely sunk,—there were dense purple shadows darkening over the mountains, and one or two small stars faintly discernible in the east. I walked slowly back to the villa where we were staying,—a ‘dépendance’ belonging to the large hotel of the district, which we had rented for the sake of privacy and independence, some of the hotel-servants being portioned off to attend upon us, in addition to my own man Morris, and my wife’s maid. I found Sibyl in the garden, reclining in a basket-chair, her eyes fixed on the after-glow of the sunset, and in her hands a book,—one of the loathliest of the prurient novels that have been lately written by women to degrade and shame their sex. With a sudden impulse of rage upon me which I could not resist, I snatched the volume from her and flung it into the lake below. She made no movement of either surprise or offence,—she merely turned her eyes away from the glowing heavens, and looked at me with a little smile.
“How violent you are to-day, Geoffrey!” she said.
I gazed at her in sombre silence. From the light hat with its pale mauve orchids that rested on her nut-brown hair, to the point of her daintily embroidered shoe, her dress was perfect,—and she was perfect. I knew that,—a matchless piece of womanhood ... outwardly! My heart beat,—there was a sense of suffocation in my throat,—I could have killed her for the mingled loathing and longing which her beauty roused in me.
“I am sorry!” I said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze—“But I hate to see you with such a book as that!”
“You know its contents?” she queried, with the same slight smile.
“I can guess.”
“Such things have to be written, they say nowadays,”—she went on—“And, certainly, to judge from the commendation bestowed on these sort of books by the press, it is very [p 306] evident that the wave of opinion is setting in the direction of letting girls know all about marriage before they enter upon it, in order that they may do so with their eyes wide open,—very wide open!” She laughed, and her laughter hurt me like a physical wound. “What an old-fashioned idea the bride of the poets and sixty-years-ago romancists seems now!” she continued—“Imagine her!—a shrinking tender creature, shy of beholders, timid of speech, ... wearing the emblematic veil, which in former days, you know, used to cover the face entirely, as a symbol that the secrets of marriage were as yet hidden from the maiden’s innocent and ignorant eyes. Now the veil is worn flung back from the bride’s brows, and she stares unabashed at everybody,—oh yes, indeed we know quite well what we are doing now when we marry, thanks to the ‘new’ fiction!”
“The new fiction is detestable,”—I said hotly—“Both in style and morality. Even as a question of literature I wonder at your condescending to read any of it. The woman whose dirty book I have just thrown away—and I feel no compunction for having done it,—is destitute of grammar as well as decency.”
“Oh, but the critics don’t notice that,”—she interrupted, with a delicate mockery vibrating in her voice—“It is apparently not their business to assist in preserving the purity of the English language. What they fall into raptures over is the originality of the ‘sexual’ theme, though I should have thought all such matters were as old as the hills. I never read reviews as a rule, but I did happen to come across one on the book you have just drowned,—and in it, the reviewer stated he had cried over it!”