Robert W. Chambers

“ If the world will let me I shall be both wife and mother. But if the world interferes to stultify me, then, nevertheless I shall still be both, and the law can keep the title it refuses me. I deny the right of man to cripple, mar, render sterile my youth and womanhood. I deny the right of the world to forbid me love, and its expression, as long as I harm no one by loving. Clive, it would take a diviner law than man's notions of divinity, to kill in me the right to live and love and bring the living into life. ”

“ Because I've been everything to you except that."
"I want you for my wife," he interrupted sharply.
"But you are married, Clive. So what more can I be to you, unless I become—what I don't want to become—"
"I merely want you to love me—until I can find some way out of this hell on earth I'm living in!"
"Dear, I'm sorry! I'm sorry you are so unhappy. But you can't get free,—can you? She won't let you, will she?"
"I've got to have my freedom! I can't stand this. Good God! Must a man do life for being a fool once? Isn't there any allowance to be made for a first offence? ”

“ I know no more than that."
"Then why are you so serene under the menace of this miserable affair? For myself I care nothing; I'd thank God for a divorce on any terms. But you—dearest—dearest!—I cannot endure the thought of you entangled in such a shameful—"
"Where is the shame, Clive? The real shame, I mean. In me there are two selves; neither have, as yet, been disgraced by any disobedience of any law framed by men for women. Nor shall I break men's laws—under which women are governed without their own consent—unless no other road to our common destiny presents itself for me to follow." ”