Cora’s great hazel eyes were opened wide with astonishment. As if by magic the tears ceased to flow; her face grew deathly white; huskily she whispered,
“What is it you mean, Imelda? I do not understand. I have heard your words but have not caught their import. The Imelda that I know regarded a life such as I have been leading a deadly, hideous sin, and your words almost imply that——I——have done right.”
“They do imply it, darling! I think you have been brave and true and strong. It might be, though, that it was because you were not so strongly bound, as I, by the fetters of prejudice, but I also am getting rid of these fetters and hope soon to be a free woman, and in the measure that I am gaining liberty I understand better what it means to others to be deprived of that precious boon. Sister mine, my eyes have been opened to many evils existing in this world, and the starvation of woman’s sex-nature until marriage, when the starvation generally changes to surfeit and sex slavery is one of the greatest evils that this world knows. A few men are intelligent and noble enough to understand this; men who suffer almost as much from this accursed system as do most women, and, little girl, your Owen was one of these noble men. After all you have told me about yourself and him I am rather surprised you did not dare the world and claim your own.”
“Imelda! This from—you! I wanted to save him from himself. I know he would never have given me cause to rue it had I entrusted myself, my life, to his care. He was too noble, too true for that. But you know the law gives him to that other woman, and how it would have hurt him in the society wherein he moves and in which he ranks so high.”
“I understand. Love blinded you to your own interests while you sought to guard only his, forgetful of the fact that every pang that was torturing your own heart would find an echo in his. Oh, what a horrible structure is society; built as it is upon the quivering hearts of poor bleeding humanity!”
Cora listened in open-eyed wonder to the words that fell from the lips of her sister. To her unsophisticated ears they sounded like rank treason, only that she knew that Imelda’s mind and heart were not capable of treason. Long and earnestly therefore did the elder sister talk to the younger one, trying to make clear her views and theories, and as Cora caught their import a new hope, like sweet balm, crept into the weary heart. Was she then not the loathsome and vile thing the world would have her believe herself to be? Could it really be that true love, soul-elevating, ennobling and purifying love, does not need the sanction of state and church to give it those redeeming qualities? O, how like another being she would feel if the sweet consciousness could be hers that she was not unclean and defiled; but that her love was just as pure and holy as in its highest, noblest sense it ever could be.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Long ere this the assurance had been Imelda’s that Edith and Hilda were both true sisters of their brother Wilbur, and that they espoused sex reform in its highest sense, and when an hour later these two bright girls joined the Ellwood sisters Cora was again surprised to hear the same sentiments voiced in equally strong language. Hilda knelt beside the dumb-founded Cora, and while playfully fondling her hand told her of plans that had been maturing in that youthful head.
“Sometimes,” she said, “when we shall have more money at our command than now, we will build ourselves a home. O, such a glorious, beautiful home, in some retired or isolated spot, and our lovers shall come and share it. But only just so long as they are our lovers, for we want no masters. We shall be strong enough, and capable of standing at the head of our home ourselves, and directing its management. Don’t you think so? Our home shall be our kingdom, and we shall reign queens therein, and our lovers will be our dear friends and comrades, instead of husbands. Will not that be glorious?”
With an experience such as hers had been it was not much to be wondered at that Cora became an apt pupil of this, to her, new doctrine, and of which this trio of girls were such enthusiastic advocates. Edith and Imelda smiled as they listened to the glowing description of Hilda’s home while a new and wonderful light began to glow in the hazel eyes of the bewildered Cora, and then she began to question, and all the time one utterance of Hilda’s kept ringing in her ears: “When we shall have more money.” When? But first she wanted to know and understand, and for a while she kept the trio busy answering her questions. She had become deeply interested and now wanted fully to understand.