The one thing
is that if I do that, I'll know this time what I really am. Your
mistress, Roddy; your legal, perfectly respectable mistress,--and a
little more despicable rather than less, I think, because of the
adjectives."

"I've let that word go by once," he said quietly, but with a dangerous
light of anger in his eyes. "I won't again. It's perfectly outrageous
and inexcusable that you should talk like that, and I'll ask you never
to do it again."

"I won't," she flashed back at him, "if you'll explain why I'm not
exactly what I say." And after ten seconds of silence, she went on.

"Why, Roddy, I've heard you describe me a hundred times. Not the you
that's my lover. The other you; talking all over the universe to Barry
Lake. You've described the woman who's never been trained nor taught nor
disciplined; who's been brought up soft, with the bloom on, for the
purpose of making her marriageable; who's never found her job in
marriage, who doesn't cook, nor sew, nor spin, nor even take care of her
own children; the woman who uses her sex charm to save her from having
to do hard ugly things, and keep her in luxury. Do you remember what
you've called her, Roddy? Do you remember the word you've used? I've
used a gentler word than that.

"Oh, you didn't know, you poor blind boy, that I was the woman you were
talking about. You never saw it at all. But I am. I was brought up like
that.--Oh, not on purpose. Dear old mother! She wasn't trying to make me
into a prostitute any more then you are trying to make me into your
mistress. You both love me, that's all. It's just an instinct not to let
anything hurt me, nor frighten me, nor tire me, nor teach me what work
is. She thought she was educating me to be a lawyer so that when the
time came, I could be one of the leaders of the woman movement just as
she'd been. And all the while, without knowing it, she was educating me
to be the sort of person you'd fall in love with--something precious and
expensive--something to be taken care of.

"I didn't understand any of that when you married me, Roddy; it was just
like a dream to me--like a fairy story come true. If any one had told me
a year ago, that I should ever be anything but perfectly happy in your
love for me, I'd have laughed at him. I remember telling Madame Greville
that our marriage had turned out well--ended happily. And she did laugh.
That was before I'd begun to understand. But I do understand now. I know
why it was