No man that is master of himself would live with a woman who is not also free--the free associate only with the free--they do not consort with curs, whether men or women. It is fools’ cant that speaks of the woman _obeying_ the man--such a man were only fit to be the father of a slave people. And more--the woman in marriage must be free to live her nobility. I am not of those puling women who, when they are flung aside or suffer rebuff, cling to the arm of him who strikes the blow--who whimper and cringe and are content to be content if they but have occasional consideration. Least of all am I of those women who, being stung with a man’s neglect and jibe and injustice, walk through a haggard existence by the man’s shrinking side, keeping his allegiance by the dread of her crying out upon him to the neighbours, driving him with scowl or invective along a narrow path where his unwilling feet are kept from straying only through fear for his petty dignities--making him a slave to his weaknesses and hers, and herself a hissing whip and a shame. Such women are of the slave-peoples--they mother a race of weaklings. For fear is as much through the mother as the father. But, you will say, ‘Let us explain, let us make it up and kiss and be friends, let us bury the past.’ So indeed we might sit by the wayside of life and babble threadbare platitudes to hide our losses. Would that be music in our ears? Would it be gain? Even if you hoodwinked me with pathetic promises of duty and the like, is our strength increased? The conventions of the world might be satisfied by my meekly bowing my head and walking primly by your side. But the past is immortal, and rises again from the dead. We might take our walks abroad together, but we should no longer go hand in hand--a ghost strides between. He smells of the dead most unconscionably, this fawning spectre of little diplomacies. Pah! how I detest the cringing flunkey that speaks in apologies! You would not have me walk along a way of frequent reconciliations--each reconciliation a humiliation--each humiliation making that uneasy ghost that stalks between us into a more tangible figure of Hate. Reconciliations! of what? for what? You do not think me so little free that I would stoop to call for explanations--explanations that but explain why explanations should not be. What have you or I to do with the conventions of the world, when all’s said? We are not the hirelings of the world. Are you and I the timid servants of the gossips? Life is an affirmation--a great Thou Shalt--not an enfeebling incubus of belittling Thou Shalt Nots. Love, like friendship, will not suffer catechism--does not rest on commandments--does not increase through rebuff. Life is not a bundle of apologies--how much less then is Love, which is of the essence of Life! Love is a splendid comrade--not an excuse for small disdains.