“On all sides,” said Imelda, “through the force of circumstances young lives are lost in the sloughs of vice and shame. Woman sells her virtue to the highest bidder; the one for a passing hour, the other for a life time. Which of the two is the worse? The merciless and unnatural codes of society demand the unsexing of woman by strangling nature’s desires, then these codes permit one man to drive her to the grave or to the mad house through the power given to him by the law. The woman that would be true to her normal instincts, the woman that would practicalize her natural right of being a mother, must first sell herself for all time to some man, who, in return, forces upon her what at first was a pleasure and a blessing but now a hundred-fold curse. To surrender herself in love with holiest emotions is a sin, is a demoralization. To endure the hated embrace of the man who long since murdered every trace of that holy love, is a duty and virtue.
“To escape such thralldom is to her an utter impossibility, as the only way out lies through that most damnable of abominations, the divorce court, where every pure instinct of a sensitive woman’s nature is outraged to such extent that generally she prefers, of the two evils, the marital outrage to that of the divorce court.
“And yet the world goes on. Ignorant mothers bear and rear ignorant children. From their birth nature is strangled. They are fed and clothed in an unhealthful, unnatural manner, so that the wonder is, not that there are so many small graves but rather that so many survive. The little girl with propensities to romp is told she is a hoyden, a tomboy. The boy with refined sentiments, that he is a ‘sissy,’ and so on throughout the long category. We are bound, fettered, on all sides from the cradle to the grave. No matter what misery, what woe, springs therefrom, never go your own way but travel only that which is mapped out for you by custom which has been foisted upon society. O, it is so unnatural, so miserable, this binding, this fettering, this laying down laws that are made only to be broken.”
She had spoken rapidly, and had warmed in her enthusiasm. Her head thrown slightly backward with a motion most graceful, her eyes shining with a glory that was beautiful, and Norman did not fail to be struck by it.
“How can it all affect us, my sweet?” he asked. “Are we not far above all the horrible pictures you have drawn?”
“I hope so,” she answered. “I do, indeed, hope we are above it, but don’t you see every picture has its ground work in the ‘Thou shalt not,’ of some law? Every picture has its clanking chains and the heaviest is always the marriage chain. Don’t you see, don’t you understand?” He folded her close in his arms, an action which she by no means resented.
“And must our sweet love be sacrificed because of those horrible conditions? Have you not more faith in the voice of your heart?” Tears sprang to her eyes. O, how hard it was to steel that heart to the pleadings of the precious voice. How could she make him understand that he possessed the unbounded trust, the most unconditional love of her whole being?
“I have all the faith in the world in you,” she said, as with trembling fingers she caressed the fair locks that fell in clustering masses over the open noble brow.
“Can you not see, can you not understand that I love you with all the strength of my being? Let us be happy now, in the present, in that love, and trust to the future to lift the veil, to dispel the clouds,”—and he could not dissuade her. He kissed the tears from the shining dark eyes. His love for her grew with every hour. He realized that bitter suffering in the past had sown the seed of the present strength of character and growth of views to which until now he had given but a passing thought.