ctity of marriage because she believed that the welfare of society
depends upon the order maintained in family relations. But her belief
also was that the form the law demands is nothing, the feeling which
leads those concerned to desire it, everything. What she had hitherto
seen of married life, as at present instituted, was not calculated to
make her think highly of it. Her mother and her friend's mother had led
the veriest dogs' lives because the law would not permit them to leave
brutal and sensual husbands, whom they had ceased to honor or love. Her
sister had been driven mad by the ill-treatment of a man to whom she was
bound by legal, but not by natural ties. Lady Kingsborough, giving to
dogs the love which neither her coarse husband nor her children by him
could evoke, was not a brilliant example of conjugal pleasure. Probably
in London other cases had come within her notice. Marriage vows, it
seemed, were with the majority but the convenient cloak of vice. Women
lived with their husbands that they might be more free to entertain their
lovers. Men lived with their wives that they might keep establishments
elsewhere for their mistresses. Love was the one unimportant element in
the marriage compact. The artificial tone of society had disgusted all
the more earnest thinkers of the day. The very extreme to which existing
evils were carried drove reformers to the other. Rousseau and Helvetius
clamored for a relapse into a state of nature without exactly knowing
what the realization of their theories would produce. Mary reasoned in
the same spirit as they did, and from no desire to uphold the doctrine of
free love. Fearless in her practice as in her theories, she did not
hesitate in this emergency to act in a way that seemed to her conscience
right. She loved Imlay honestly and sincerely. Because she loved him she
could not think evil of him, nor suppose for a moment that his passion
was not as pure and true as hers. Therefore she consented to live with
him as his wife, though no religious nor civil ceremony could sanction
their union.

That this, according to the world's standard, was wrong, is a fact beyond
dispute. But before the first stones are thrown, the _pros_ as well as
the _cons_ must be remembered. If Mary had held the conventional beliefs
as to the relations of the sexes, she would be judged by them. Had she
thought her connection with Imlay criminal, then she would be condemned
by her own conviction. But s