This fragment of conversation passed in the Luxembourg Garden; and the
three or four of us by whom she was accompanied glared threateningly
at our mental image of that not-impossible upstart whom she might some
day meet and love. We were sure, of course, that he would be a beast;
we hated him not merely because he would have cut us out with her, but
because he would be so distinctly our inferior, so hopelessly unworthy
of her, so helplessly incapable of appreciating her. I think we
conceived of him as tall, with drooping fair moustaches, and
contemptibly meticulous in his dress. He would probably not be of the
Quarter; he would sneer at _us_.

'He'll not understand her, he'll not respect her. Take her peculiar
views. We know where she gets them. But he--he'll despise her for
them, at the very time he's profiting by 'em,' some one said.

Her peculiar views of the institution of matrimony, the speaker meant.
She had got them from her father. 'The relations of the sexes should
be as free as friendship,' he had taught. 'If a man and a woman love
each other, it is nobody's business but their own. Neither the Law nor
Society can, with any show of justice, interfere. That they do
interfere, is a survival of feudalism, a survival of the system under
which the individual, the subject, had no liberty, no rights. If a man
and a woman love each other, they should be as free to determine for
themselves the character, extent, and duration of their intercourse,
as two friends should be. If they wish to live together under the same
roof, let them. If they wish to retain their separate domiciles, let
them. If they wish to cleave to each other till death severs them--if
they wish to part on the morrow of their union--let them, by heaven.
But the couple who go before a priest or a magistrate, and bind