She stretched her arms out, pleading; she turned those subtle eyes

to him, appealingly. She was a beautiful woman. Alan Merrick was

human. The man in him gave way; he seized her in his clasp, and

pressed her close to his bosom. It heaved tumultuously. "I could

do anything for you, Herminia," he cried, "and indeed, I do

sympathize with you. But give me, at least, till to-morrow to

think this thing over. It is a momentous question; don't let us be

precipitate."

Herminia drew a long breath. His embrace thrilled through her.

"As you will," she answered with a woman's meekness. "But

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remember, Alan, what I say I mean; on these terms it shall be, and

upon none others. Brave women before me have tried for awhile to

act on their own responsibility, for the good of their sex; but

never of their own free will from the very beginning. They have

avoided marriage, not because they thought it a shame and a

surrender, a treason to their sex, a base yielding to the unjust

pretensions of men, but because there existed at the time some

obstacle in their way in the shape of the vested interest of some

other woman. When Mary Godwin chose to mate herself with Shelley,

she took her good name in her hands; but still there was Harriet.

As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary showed she had no deep principle

of action involved, by marrying Shelley. When George Eliot chose

to pass her life with Lewes on terms of equal freedom, she defied

the man-made law; but still, there was his wife to prevent the

possibility of a legalized union. As soon as Lewes was dead,

George Eliot showed she had no principle involved, by marrying

another man. Now, _I_ have the rare chance of acting otherwise; I

can show the world from the very first that I act from principle,

and from principle only. I can say to it in effect, 'See, here is

the man of my choice, the man I love, truly, and purely, the man

any one of you would willingly have seen offering himself in lawful

marriage to your own daughters. If I would, I might go the beaten

way you prescribe, and marry him legally. But of my own free will

I disdain that degradation; I choose rather to be free. No fear of

your scorn, no dread of your bigotry, no shrinking at your cruelty,

shall prevent me from following the thorny path I know to be the

right one. I seek no temporal end. I will not prove false to the

future of my kind in order to protect myself from your hateful

indignities. I know on what vile foundations your temple of

wedlock is based and built, what pitiable victims languish and die

in its sickening vaults; and I will not consent to enter it. Here,

of my own free will, I take my stand for the right, and refuse your

sanctions! No woman that I know of has ever yet done that. Other

women have fallen, as men choose to put it in their odious dialect;

no other has voluntarily risen as I propose to do.'" She paused a

moment for breath. "Now you know how I feel," she continued,

looking straight into his eyes. "Say no more at present; it is

wisest so. But go home and think it out, and talk it over with me

tomorrow."




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