“It need make no difference,” Herminia answered, with a light touch of her hand.  “Harvey, I have far too few friends in the world willingly to give up one of them.  Come again and go down with Dolly and me to Hind Head as usual next Sunday.”

“Thank you,” the man answered.  “Herminia, I wish it could have been otherwise.  But since I must never have you, I can promise you one thing; I will never marry any other woman.”

Herminia started at the words.  “Oh, no,” she cried quickly.  “How can you speak like that?  How can you say anything so wrong, so untrue, so foolish?  To be celibate is a very great misfortune even for a woman; for a man it is impossible, it is cruel, it is wicked.  I endure it myself, for my child’s sake, and because I find it hard to discover the help meet for me; or because, when discovered, he refuses to accept me in the only way in which I can bestow myself.  But for a man to pretend to live celibate is to cloak hateful wrong under a guise of respectability.  I should be unhappy if I thought any man was doing such a vicious thing out of desire to please me.  Take some other woman on free terms if you can; but if you cannot, it is better you should marry than be a party to still deeper and more loathsome slavery.”

And from that day forth they were loyal friends, no more, one to the other.

XVII.

And yet our Herminia was a woman after all.  Some three years later, when Harvey Kynaston came to visit her one day, and told her he was really going to be married,—­what sudden thrill was this that passed through and through her.  Her heart stood still.  She was aware that she regretted the comparative loss of a very near and dear acquaintance.

She knew she was quite wrong.  It was the leaven of slavery.  But these monopolist instincts, which have wrought more harm in the world we live in than fire or sword or pestilence or tempest, hardly die at all as yet in a few good men, and die, fighting hard for life, even in the noblest women.

She reasoned with herself against so hateful a feeling.  Though she knew the truth, she found it hard to follow.  No man indeed is truly civilized till he can say in all sincerity to every woman of all the women he loves, to every woman of all the women who love him, “Give me what you can of your love and of yourself; but never strive for my sake to deny any love, to strangle any impulse that pants for breath within you.  Give me what you can, while you can, without grudging, but the moment you feel you love me no more, don’t pollute your own body by yielding it up to a man you have ceased to desire; don’t do injustice to your own prospective children by giving them a father whom you no longer respect, or admire, or yearn for.  Guard your chastity well.  Be mine as much as you will, as long as you will, to such extent as you will, but before all things be your own; embrace and follow every instinct of