And Smith, thus "proudly numbering himself among the angels," also found time for a secondary, but quite passionate, intercourse with one of the daughters of the house, who
willingly gives him everything she has; because she loves him so much, he is all she wants.
He "kissed her violently on the face . . . squeezed her ribs as tight as ever he dared," and replied without hesitation, "I love you as I love flowers and the trees and the sky. I love you because you are lovable as a wet or fine day is lovable. Why, yes, I must confess that I love you. . . . . I believe all men love a great many women. . . . I am a Bluebeard with a cellar full of wives. . . . You see, God hasn't created the woman yet who represents the whole of female perfection. Don't mistake me, Nathalia; I am not a beast. I don't run after women solely as women. . . . He began to stroke her head as he thought of all those past and bygone romances."
And so on——! Strangely enough, "his heart was filled with deep and tender respect for her."
More frequently, however, the novelists of this school seem to have gone back to the casual lusts of Tom Jones, with the rôle of hero and heroine reversed. There are many tales, almost romantic, of Sir Galahad waiting and tilting for Cleopatra or Mary Queen of Scots. Too often, marriage is merely evidence that "the man has held out."
Still we maintain that the modernists are really looking to the old-world "kept" woman for their ideal of more or less open and, as it were, established free love. We find clear, specific complaints against the new system: "They had lapsed into a relation which slowly from irregular grew regular. It was not marriage, but it was in the nature of marriage." Now, "after two and a half years . . . she had done wifely things for him. . . . Love and domestic economy; it was very like marriage after all."
What then, frankly speaking, is the real charm of the new mistress-love? Most obviously it comes, ultimately, from the holiday spirit; its freedom from sordid or petty cares, the prose of our daily life, business or home worries, the responsibilities that dull the eye and wear down body and soul: which means the incarnation of selfishness.
Outspoken and simply coarse writers of the past centuries expose this fact by their frank hints on "the honeymoon"; of which we acknowledge the underlying truth.
It has been cynically maintained, nor dare one quite deny, that our romance-lady, the sheltered and innocent pure girl, would have been broken long ago but for the "outlet," to
mere males, of her under-sister. I would suggest that the new "ideal" mistress is certainly no less, probably more, dependent upon the housewife—the tame, tied woman who bears her lover's name.