untry clergyman is
about the most undeveloped creature you could have, and a great artist
is the most developed, the nearest approach to a god of all human
beings."

I did not answer, but sat silent staring at her. She looked such a
sweet little Saxon schoolgirl in her white dress, but with such
tremendous character and power in those great shining eyes.

"But if we marry now," I said at last, "and anything should ... should
come between us, I don't see it would be any worse than...."

"Than if we were living together without marriage," she put in
quickly. "Yes, I think it would. Look here, if we marry now with a
great blaze and fuss, and invite all our friends to see the event,
which is great nonsense anyway, and then you see some other woman
later you covet, it seems to me there are only three ways open to us:
either you go without the woman and suffer very much in consequence
and always owe me a grudge for standing in your way; or you take her
and I have to profess to see nothing and look on quietly, which I
could never stand, it would send me mad; or we must have all the
trouble and worry and scandal of a divorce and call in the public to
witness our quarrel; and why _should_ we have the public to interfere
in our affairs?" she added, her eyes flashing. "What is it to them
whom I love or whom I live with, whom I leave or quarrel with? These
are all private matters."

"And if we live together and the same thing happens?" I pursued
quietly.

"Why, then we should separate, only without any trouble, any
publicity; we should fall apart naturally. If you preferred any one
else, you must go to her; I should slip away out of your life, and we
should each be free and untied."

"If it's so much better for the man to change," I said smiling, "it
must be the same for the woman."

"So it is," rejoined Viola quickly; "the more men a woman has the more
developed she is, the better for her morally, if there is no
conventional disgrace attaching to it. Amongst the Greeks, Aspasia and
all those women of her class were far more intellectual, more
developed than the wives who were kept at home to spin and rear
children."

"All these things ought to be optional. If a woman loves one man so
much she wants to stay with him for ever and ever, probably through
such a great passion she reaches her highest development; but until
she has found that man she ought to be allowed to go from one to
another without any disgrace attaching