. That might prove a mutual torment. Their love was to be
implicit. They were to write at intervals about political matters
and their common interests, and to keep each other informed of their
movements about the world.

"We shall be working together," she said, speaking suddenly out of a
train of thought she had been following, "we shall be closer together
than many a couple who have never spent a day apart for twenty years."

Then presently she said: "In the New Age all lovers will have to be
accustomed to meeting and parting. We women will not be tied very much
by domestic needs. Unless we see fit to have children. We shall be going
about our business like men; we shall have world-wide businesses--many
of us--just as men will....

"It will be a world full of lovers' meetings."

"Some day--somewhere--we two will certainly meet again."

"Even you have to force circumstances a little," said Sir Richmond.

"We shall meet," she said, "without doing that."

"But where?" he asked unanswered....

"Meetings and partings," she said. "Women will be used to seeing their
lovers go away. Even to seeing them go away to other women who have
borne them children and who have a closer claim on them."

"No one--" began Sir Richmond, startled.

"But I don't mind very much. It's how things are. If I were a perfectly
civilized woman I shouldn't mind at all. If men and women are not to be
tied to each other there must needs be such things as this."

"But you," said Sir Richmond. "I at any rate am not like that. I cannot
bear the thought that YOU--"

"You need not bear it, my dear. I was just trying to imagine this world
that is to be. Women I think are different from men in their jealousy.
Men are jealous of the other man; women are jealous for their man--and
careless about the other woman. What I love in you I am sure about. My
mind was empty when it came to you and now it is full to overflowing. I
shall feel you moving about in the same world with me. I'm not likely to
think of anyone else for a very long time.... Later on, who knows? I may
marry. I make no vows. But I think until I know certainly that you do
not want me any more it will be impossible for me to marry or to have a
lover. I don't know, but that is how I believe it will be with me. And
my mind feels beautifully clear now and settled. I've got your idea and
made it my own, your idea that we matter scarcely at all, but that the
work we do matters supremely. I'll f