piness in
marriage, for so many forget that to be married is not to be one. They
do not understand that however much they may love, whatever delights
they may share, whatever common ambitions they may harbor, whatever they
hope, or endeavor, or pray, two people are still two people. Or if they
know it, they say, "He is mine." "She is mine." If one could give
oneself entirely, it would be well enough, but however much one may want
to do so one cannot, just because one is the axis of the earth. Because
one cannot, one will not, and he that would absorb will never forgive.
He will be jealous, he will be suspicious, tyrannical, he will watch and
lay traps, he will court injury, he will air grievances, because the
next best thing to complete possession is railing at his impotency to
conquer. That jealousy is turned against everything, against work,
against art, against relatives, friends, dead loves, little children,
toy dogs: "Thou shalt have none other gods but me" is a human
commandment.

Men do not, as a rule, suffer very much from this desire to possess,
because they are so sure that they do possess, because they find it so
difficult to conceive that their wife can find any other man attractive.
They are too well accustomed to being courted, even if they are old and
repulsive, because they have power and money; only they think it is
because they are men. Beyond a jealous care for their wives' fidelity,
which I suspect arises mainly from the feeling that an unfaithful wife
is a criticism, they do not ask very much. But women suffer more deeply
because they know that man has lavished on them for centuries a
condescending admiration, that the king who lays his crown at their feet
knows that his is the crown to give. While men possess by right of
possession, women possess only by right of precarious conquest. They
feel it very bitterly, this fugitive empire, and their greatest tragedy
is to find themselves growing a little older, uncertain of their power,
for they know they have only one power; they are afraid, as age comes,
of losing their man, while I have never heard of a husband afraid of
losing his wife, or able to repress his surprise if she forsook him.

It would not matter so much if the feeling of property were that of a
good landlord, who likes to see his property develop and grow beautiful,
but mutual property is the feeling of the slave owner. Sometimes both
parties suffer so, and by asking too much lose all. M