handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, and there is so much
importunate service going forward, that a woman is hardly alone long
enough to become aware, in recollection, how her own blood moves
separately, beside her, with another rhythm and different pulses. All is
commonplace until the doors are closed upon the two. This unique
intimacy is a profound retreat, an absolute seclusion. It is more than
single solitude; it is a redoubled isolation more remote than mountains,
safer than valleys, deeper than forests, and further than mid-sea.

That solitude partaken--the only partaken solitude in the world--is the
Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and a betrayal
of that confidence might well be held to be the least pardonable of all
crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a
woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a
child's foot runs. But the favourite crime of the sentimentalist is that
of a woman against her child. Her power, her intimacy, her opportunity,
that should be her accusers, are held to excuse her. She gains the most
slovenly of indulgences and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar
grounds that her crime was easy.

Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by the
way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from common
opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the situation. He
was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was his secret, and the
public was not privy to his artistic conscience. He does violence to the
obligations of which he is aware, and which the world does not know very
explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he is lawless in a more literal
sense, but only hopes the world will believe that he has a whole code of
his own making. It would, nevertheless, be less unworthy to break
obvious rules obviously in the obvious face of the public, and to abide