“You seem to have great confidence in your ability to manage my wife!”
“If you continue to resent my existence,” I answered, gravely, “you will make it impossible for me to help you.”
“Pardon me,” he said—but he did not say it cordially.
I went on: “There is much that can be said in your behalf. I realize it is quite possible that you were not wholly to blame when you wrote to Bishop Chilton that you were fit to marry; I know that you may have believed it—that you might even have found physicians to tell you so. There is wide-spread ignorance on the subject of this disease. Men have the idea that the chronic forms of it cannot be communicated to women, and it is difficult to make them realize what modern investigations have proven. You can explain that to Sylvia, and I will back you up in it. You were in love with her, you wanted her. Go to her now, and admit to her honestly that you have wronged her. Beg her to forgive you, and to let you help make the best of the cruel situation that has arisen.”
So I went on, pouring out my soul. And when I had finished, he said, “Mrs. Abbott, I have listened patiently to your most remarkable proposition. My answer is that I must ask you to withdraw from this intimate matter, which concerns only my wife and myself.”
He was back where we started! Trying to sweep aside these grim and terrible realities with the wave of a conventional hand! Was this the way he met Sylvia’s arguments? I felt moved to tell him what I thought of him.
“You are a proud man, Mr. van Tuiver—an obstinate man, I fear. It is hard for you to humble yourself to your wife—to admit a crime and beg forgiveness. Tell me—is that why you hesitate? Is it because you fear you will have to take second place in your family from now on—that you will no longer be able to dominate Sylvia? Are you afraid of putting into her hands a weapon of self-defence?”
He made no response.
“Very well,” I said, at last. “Let me tell you, then—I will not help any man to hold such a position in a woman’s life. Women have to bear half the burdens of marriage, they pay half, or more than half, the penalties; and so it is necessary that they have a voice in its affairs. Until they know the truth, they can never have a voice.”
Of course my little lecture on Feminism might as well have been delivered to a sphinx. “How stupid you are!” I cried. “Don’t you know that some day Sylvia must find out the truth for herself?”