h her
resentment at being in any sense property, her self-reliant thought, her
independence of standard, was the very prototype of that sister-lover
who must replace the seductive and abject womanhood, owned, mastered and
deceiving, who waste the world to-day. And she was owned, she was
mastered, she was forced into concealment. What alternative was there
for her? What alternative is there for any woman? She might perhaps have
kept her freedom by some ill-paid work and at the price of every other
impulse in her swift and eager nature. She might have become one of
those poor neuters, an independent woman.... Life was made impossible
for her and she was forced to die, according to the fate of all untimely
things. She was destroyed, not merely by the unconsidered, undisciplined
passions of her husband and her lover, but by the vast tradition that
sustains and enforces the subjugation of her sex. What I had from her,
and what she was, is but a mere intimation of all that she and I might
have made of each other and the world.

And perhaps in this story I have said enough for you to understand why
Mary has identified herself with something world-wide, has added to
herself a symbolical value, and why it is I find in the whole crowded
spectacle of mankind, a quality that is also hers, a sense of fine
things entangled and stifled and unable to free themselves from the
ancient limiting jealousies which law and custom embody. For I know that
a growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient ways. The
blood-stained organized jealousies of religious intolerance, the
delusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred which
simple people and young people and common people cherish against all
that is not in the likeness of themselves, cease to be the undisputed
ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate our lives
from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds and
suspicion. The ripening mind of our race tires of these boorish and
brutish and childish things. A spirit that is like hers, arises and
increases in human affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and gracious
living as our inheritance too long deferred, and I who loved her so
blindly and narrowly now love her spirit with a dawning understanding.

I will not be content with that compromise of jealousies which is the
established life of humanity to-day. I give myself, and if I can I will
give you, to the destruction of jealousy and o