me, at least, till to-morrow to
think this thing over. It is a momentous question; don't let us be
precipitate."

Herminia drew a long breath. His embrace thrilled through her.
"As you will," she answered with a woman's meekness. "But
remember, Alan, what I say I mean; on these terms it shall be, and
upon none others. Brave women before me have tried for awhile to
act on their own responsibility, for the good of their sex; but
never of their own free will from the very beginning. They have
avoided marriage, not because they thought it a shame and a
surrender, a treason to their sex, a base yielding to the unjust
pretensions of men, but because there existed at the time some
obstacle in their way in the shape of the vested interest of some
other woman. When Mary Godwin chose to mate herself with Shelley,
she took her good name in her hands; but still there was Harriet.
As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary showed she had no deep principle
of action involved, by marrying Shelley. When George Eliot chose
to pass her life with Lewes on terms of equal freedom, she defied
the man-made law; but still, there was his wife to prevent the
possibility of a legalized union. As soon as Lewes was dead,
George Eliot showed she had no principle involved, by marrying
another man. Now, _I_ have the rare chance of acting otherwise; I
can show the world from the very first that I act from principle,
and from principle only. I can say to it in effect, 'See, here is
the man of my choice, the man I love, truly, and purely, the man
any one of you would willingly have seen offering himself in lawful
marriage to your own daughters. If I would, I might go the beaten
way you prescribe, and marry him legally. But of my own free will
I disdain that degradation; I choose rather to be free. No fear of
your scorn, no dread of your bigotry, no shrinking at your cruelty,
shall prevent me from following the thorny path I know to be the
right one. I seek no temporal end. I will not prove false to the
future of my kind in order to protect myself from your hateful
indignities. I know on what vile foundations your temple of
wedlock is based and built, what pitiable victims languish and die
in its sickening vaults; and I will not consent to enter it. Here,
of my own free will, I take my stand for the right, and refuse your
sanctions! No woman that I know of has ever yet done that. Other
women have fallen, as men choose to put it in their odious