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. We can none of us escape "the day's work." Under the conventional "wild oats" scheme of life, we _can_ place the whole burden upon the wife: and so find elsewhere "The Woman"—passionately and emotionally our ideal. But no theory of free love was ever based upon two establishments. The whole weight of the new thought cries out for open, frank _leaving one woman_ and _going to the other_; where possible by mutual consent. The secrecy, the misunderstanding, _the divided allegiance_, of the old world, is the very evil they are clamouring to wipe out. Yet _can_ we leave our bills, our servants, and our children behind with the fixtures of the old "home to let"? Can we spend our life, or for that matter, more than a few days or weeks, in one perpetual holiday among the "beach-flappers" of Miss Amber Reeves' unstable _Helen in Love_ and the boys they so gaily and easily annex? The truth, of course, cannot be denied. These new, glorified sex-contracts (whether entirely free, or on a "short lease" subject to "things going well") will, and must, involve all the trials of domesticity, without the compensations of a shared responsibility: a real bond to halve our sorrows and double our joys. There will, moreover, be a thousand times more occasion for incompatibility, the jar of nerves; where there is no steady, devoted endeavour towards mutual forbearance and understanding, no spur to forgive—in courageous hope. Life in hotels may, superficially, expose less friction; but it quickly destroys any reality in comradeship. Only daily service can build up Love. The mistress, in fact, remains an enervating luxury, a habit of living beyond our emotional means, a sparkling drug. _We have not found the Ideal, because it does not exist._ X HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF FREE LOVE!