She could
not bring herself to think of her position as that of a mistress.
To still love and do that, was beyond her. And so she persisted in
regarding herself as a woman who has faced-out conventionality,
dared the opinion of the world, and chosen to live with a man as his
wife without the condescending sanction of the Church.
It is all pardonable, all this. It is an occurrence as common in big
cities as are the lofty chimneys, and besmirching haze which, on the
horizon, herald the approach of a place where men and women are
gathered closely together. But it is a position which, with the
present conditions of tortured conventionality, is impossible,
untenable. Either a woman is the wife of a man, or his mistress; and
if the latter then, as Janet has said, she had better see to her
settlement first and build her romance, if so she chose, upon its
foundations. A man may keep closed the gates of matrimony until the
last moment, but when he finds that only through them can he gain
the woman he loves, then no amount of principle and no desire of
freedom will hinder him from swinging them wide and following her
through. On the other hand also, he will make but little attempt to
unlock those very gates, so long as there is a shadow of the prospect
within his mind that she will meet him outside.
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