She learnt then, that "the right man, or the right woman for the matter of that, isn't ever ready made. It needs effort of the most intense kind to fit a man perfectly into a woman's life, a woman perfectly into a man's."
Wherefore, "Love, real love, is the consummation of great effort, neither more nor less."
IX
WHO IS THE "IDEAL" MISTRESS?
The most determined advocates of free-love have never upheld the old, lazy indulgence towards man and his "wild oats." The ideal mistress, whom they so confidently exalt over the wife, is not the "kept woman" behind Victorian respectability. Modern writers have, boldly and justly, attacked that discreet indiscretion with the unanswerable logic of facts. If we allow men licence, justice demands equal liberty for women. Sin is not less, but greater, for being in secret, however flimsy the veil.
It is difficult, nevertheless, to see how mutual infidelity can actually remove the admitted evils of a situation it makes more complex; or to believe that publicity can, of itself, turn black to white. By some curious twist of reasoning, it really would seem that they maintain: "By lifting the blinds, we have created a 'new' woman, the ideal of all the ages."
For where, after all, have they turned to
find her, save to their knowledge and experience of the past? We cannot, positively, reconstruct human nature.
There is a clear and concise exposition of the whole theory in Miss Romer Wilson's last novel, The Death of Society. It is the story of Mr. Smith and his short visit to a distinguished Norwegian writer. He, quite openly, worships the old man's young wife—"his girl, his woman, his desire"—and though for them "time was so short they could not afford to sleep," it is expressly stated that "she, the perfect woman in whom all women live, raised him to perfect manhood." "Now," he said, "I have confidence to do what I think right. . . . I do not care for opinion any longer."