old
conspiracy into this bondage of body and soul filled her with despair.
If marriage was the slow life-long acquittal of a debt contracted in
ignorance, then marriage was a crime against human nature. She, for one,
would have no share in maintaining the pretence of which she had been a
victim: the pretence that a man and a woman, forced into the narrowest
of personal relations, must remain there till the end, though they
may have outgrown the span of each other's natures as the mature tree
outgrows the iron brace about the sapling.

It was in the first heat of her moral indignation that she had met
Clement Westall. She had seen at once that he was "interested," and had
fought off the discovery, dreading any influence that should draw her
back into the bondage of conventional relations. To ward off the peril
she had, with an almost crude precipitancy, revealed her opinions to
him. To her surprise, she found that he shared them. She was attracted
by the frankness of a suitor who, while pressing his suit, admitted that
he did not believe in marriage. Her worst audacities did not seem to
surprise him: he had thought out all that she had felt, and they had
reached the same conclusion. People grew at varying rates, and the yoke
that was an easy fit for the one might soon become galling to the other.
That was what divorce was for: the readjustment of personal relations.
As soon as their necessarily transitive nature was recognized they would
gain in dignity as well as in harmony. There would be no farther need
of the ignoble concessions and connivances, the perpetual sacrifice of
personal delicacy and moral pride, by means of which imperfect marriages
were now held together. Each partner to the contract would be on his
mettle, forced to live up to the highest standard of self-development,
on pain of losing the other's respect and affection. The low nature
could no longer drag the higher down, but must struggle to rise, or
remain alone on its inferior level. The only necessary condition to a
harmonious marriage was a frank recognition of this truth, and a solemn
agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with themselves,
and not to live together for a moment after complete accord had ceased
to exist between them. The new adultery was unfaithfulness to self.

It was, as Westall had just reminded her, on this understanding that
they had married. The ceremony was an unimportant concession to social
prejudice: now t