ly! In all this her own reputation concerned
her not at all. Life, and her clear way of looking at things, had rooted
in her the conviction that to a woman the preciousness of her reputation
was a fiction invented by men entirely for man's benefit; a second-hand
fetish insidiously, inevitably set-up by men for worship, in novels,
plays, and law-courts. Her instinct told her that men could not feel
secure in the possession of their women unless they could believe that
women set tremendous store by sexual reputation. What they wanted to
believe, that they did believe! But she knew otherwise. Such
great-minded women as she had met or read of had always left on her the
impression that reputation for them was a matter of the spirit, having
little to do with sex. From her own feelings she knew that reputation,
for a simple woman, meant to stand well in the eyes of him or her whom
she loved best. For worldly women--and there were so many kinds of
those, besides the merely fashionable--she had always noted that its
value was not intrinsic, but commercial; not a crown of dignity, but just
a marketable asset. She did not dread in the least what people might say
of her friendship with Miltoun; nor did she feel at all that her
indissoluble marriage forbade her loving him. She had secretly felt free
as soon as she had discovered that she had never really loved her
husband; she had only gone on dutifully until the separation, from sheer
passivity, and because it was against her nature to cause pain to anyone.
The man who was still her husband was now as dead to her as if he had
never been born. She could not marry again, it was true; but she could
and did love. If that love was to be starved and die away, it would not
be because of any moral scruples.

She opened her paper languidly; and almost the first words she read,
under the heading of Election News, were these:

'Apropos of the outrage on Mr. Courtier, we are requested to state that
the lady who accompanied Lord Miltoun to the rescue of that gentleman was
Mrs. Lees Noel, wife of the Rev. Stephen Lees Noel, vicar of Clathampton,
Warwickshire.'

This dubious little daub of whitewash only brought a rather sad smile to
her lips. She left her tea, and went out into the air. There at the
gate was Miltoun coming in. Her heart leaped. But she went forward
quietly, and greeted him with cast-down eyes, as if nothing were out of
the ordinary.

CHAPTER XV

Exalt