“But can you conceive in what the tragedy of my life consists in reality?” I asked.
On which, in mute questioning, he raised his beautiful mournful eyes to mine.
“In that all I have told you is untrue … and all I have not told you is untrue likewise. It is my style to talk of my sadness one day, and the next to tell of my life’s cloudless philosophy.”
“And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don’t know. Perhaps to no one. When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me.”
At this juncture, Mme. Wildenhoff, dressed in a very low-cut black velvet gown, came up to us.
“Why has not Martha been here today?” she asked. “We have not seen her for ever so long.”
“She meant to come but she is continually a victim to sick headaches.”
“Ah, yes, those sick headaches,” she remarked sympathizingly. “They are so very hard to get rid of!”
Presently she asked if I would come and look at a beautiful screen, a birthday gift for her, painted by Gina. Imszanski remained where he was.
I asked Mme. Wildenhoff why Owinski was not present.
“Really, I cannot say,” was her answer. “He was to come: but it is rather late.”
“I noticed that Gina was very much out of sorts today.”
“Yes, and I must say that I feel rather uneasy about her. There is something here that I cannot at all understand, and I love the girl. … Owinski is perpetually woolgathering; he is a man you cannot rely upon. … He strikes me as one who would be deaf to any remonstrances, any reproaches. … He is a typical poet. …”
“Then it may be that Gina is wrong in holding off from marriage with the man.”
“Marriage? A fine thing that would be! She is surely wealthy enough to do without it. … Marriage!” she added, not without a touch of pride. “Of what use was it in Imszanski’s case, I beg?”
She just looked into a mirror, hanging opposite her bed, and then swiftly glanced over me from head to foot. The comparison between us must have been not unpleasant, for she at once became more cheerful and friendly.
“My dear Miss Janina, Gina’s is a nature far too artistic for marriage. No one who can paint like that would ever make a husband of her sweetheart. Pardon me; the thing is absolutely out of the question. … Look at those flowers; with what grace she has dashed them off!”
“They are certainly exquisite. But did you notice how extraordinary an interest Owinski took in what you were saying about marriage last Thursday?”
“Yes, oh, yes; I remember. … But I can’t suppose he is thinking of marrying anyone else. … No, that is surely impossible.”
She was at once in a state of great excitement.
“Look here. Now that marriage is no more than a contract, assuring to the wife board and lodging for self and offspring, and to the husband a woman in permanency, always at home and on the qui vive; now that a bachelor cannot marry until he has achieved a position in the world, so that a marrying man who is not bald sounds like a contradictio in adjecto—marriage amounts in principle to the same as prostitution, whereas its every particular is yet more shocking.”
“I am afraid I don’t quite follow you.”
“Why, the thing is as clear as clear can be. A courtesan makes only a temporary bargain, and if she makes it for a longer time, she always reserves to herself complete liberty of action, some intervals of freedom, and the power of breaking her chain whenever she pleases; whilst the ‘honest woman’ makes the bargain for her whole life, without any hope of ever being set free: for we need not take divorce into account, were it but for the fact that a divorced woman is adversely viewed by her ‘honest’ sisters. … A common courtesan, even one who lodges in a house of ill fame, has her ‘Alphonse,’ someone to whom, and some place wherein she can give sincere, true and disinterested love, which the average honest woman cannot dare to allow herself, without the imminent danger of losing her right of alimony. Now, as to the moral difference. It lies in this: that one possesses only one husband, together with the respect of society, whereas the other has many, and is despised. Though I cannot for the life of me see what logical connection there is between a number of lovers and the obligation for a woman to respect the rights of humanity. Again: the police take charge of the streetwalker’s health; but who sees after the wife that her own husband has contaminated? The former may die of anything; the other, the honest woman, in childbed, if married; if not—if, having no portion, she cannot have a husband—she may die of what you will—and there you are! And Abolitionists arrange congresses, publish books and pamphlets, found philanthropic institutions, refuges, Christian associations to raise fallen women, and young people’s leagues to shield their purity during school-years. All this, to what purpose? That a common doctor, and not the police, should see after the street-girl’s health; that a few silly females should be shut up, not in bagnios, but in sewing-rooms; and that some women may have to teach their husbands certain things which the latter have not yet learnt! And all this in the interest of ‘coming generations!’ An empty phrase. Is not all that most ridiculous?”
She laughed; but to me her words were painful.
“But then, instead of this, are we to do nothing?”
“Not at all. Let us found homes and refuges: not for the women, but for the children whose mothers are unable to take care of them. And as to the so-called ignominy, that will remain; but we ought to laugh it to scorn. And allow me to add,” she went on, in a more earnest tone, “that to loosen in so far as we can all
