“Now listen! You believe in an indissoluble marriage, don't you?” “Yes----” “It's the first article of your creed--that marriage is a holy sacrament, that no power on earth or in hell can ever dissolve its bonds? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, my dear! They always have--they always will, I suppose. This is peculiarly true of your type of woman--the dainty, clinging girl of religious enthusiasm. You're peculiarly susceptible to the physical power of a brutal lover. Your soul glories in submission to this force. The more coarse and brutal its attraction the more abject and joyful the surrender. Your religion can't save you because your religion is purely emotional--it is only another manifestation of your sex emotions.” “How can you be so sacrilegious!” the girl interrupted with a look of horror. “It may shock you, dear, but I'm telling you one of the simplest truths of Nature. You'd as well know it now as later. The moment you wake to realize that your emotions have been deceived and bankrupted, your faith will collapse. At least keep, your grip on common-sense. Down in the cowardly soul of every weak woman--perhaps of every woman--is the insane desire to be dominated by a superior brute force. The woman of the lower classes--the peasant of Russia, for example, whose sex impulses are of all races the most violent--refuses with scorn the advances of the man who will not strike her. The man who can't beat his wife is beneath contempt--he is no man at all----” Mary broke into a laugh. “Really, Jane, you cease to be serious you're a joke. For Heaven's sake use a little common-sense yourself. You can't be warning me that my lover is marrying me in order to use his fists on me?” “Perhaps not, dear,”--the artist smiled; “there might be greater depths for one of your training and character. I'm just telling you the plain truth about the haste with which you're rushing into this marriage. There's nothing divine in it. There's no true romance of lofty sentiment. It's the simplest and most elemental of all the brutal facts of animal life. That it is resistless in a woman of your culture and refinement makes it all the more pathetic----” The girl rose with a gesture of impatience. “It's no use, Jane dear; we speak a different language. I don't in the least know what you're talking about, and what's more, I'm glad I don't. I've a vague idea that your drift is indecent. But we're different. I realize that. I don't sit in judgment on you. You're wasting your breath on me. I'm going into this marriage with my eyes wide open. It's the fulfillment of my brightest hopes and aspirations. That I shall be happy with this man and make him supremely happy I know by an intuition deeper and truer than reason. I'm going to trust that intuition without reservation.”