er of little
importance. To put the case in point, they were interested in me not
because I was a moral Englishman but because Artemisia was fond of me.
It was for them as simple as breathing to go with the being one loved.
And back of that there was another thing, which scared the modern and
moral being within me still more. It followed, from their perfectly
naive and innocent faith in Romance, that a woman was not a political
equal of man, a strenuous co-educated, enfranchised voter, but a
possession. The crown of her achievement was to be possessed by the man
she loved. He might kill her or enslave her, but without men she was of
no importance whatever. And I suspected that my own attitude which, mind
you, is the attitude of most of us, to draw away at the approach of a
compromising emotion, was difficult to comprehend. Especially when, in
response to the inevitable question, I said I wasn't married or
promised. They harped on it, those two, while the younger girl was in
the kitchen. It was evident Artemisia had confided a great deal to them
and they had talked and talked, turning this peculiar problem over in
their minds, the problem of a man who persisted in remaining a super in
the play. Barbarous of them? Well, let us say mediaeval. They lived in a
world of harsh limitations and extraordinary latitudes. They were
forbidden divorce and were accustomed to neighbours with a plurality of
wives. They seemed to know nothing of the refinements of modern passion.
For them it was a question of sex, without any admixture of social or
racial distinctions. That Artemisia had had a lover in England was not a
matter of amazement to them at all. What they couldn't understand was
the reason why everything had to be driven underground. And the
extremely _bourgeois_ conception of love culminating in a colourless
civil contract between a good provider and a capable housekeeper, which
was all they could see in American institutions--a civil contract which
could apparently be shot to pieces upon any frivolous pretext, struck
their mediaeval minds as profoundly irreligious and unpleasant.

"And then," said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly turning and savagely addressing
the silent and recumbent forms in the darkness of the awning, "I made
another astonishing discovery. They respected Captain Macedoine. A nice
old gentleman! They thought he was fine! I give you my word, when they
told me that, and proposed that we go right in and see him, I obtai