conversation that I ventured to put my arm round your waist for the
first time.

"Now I call this pleasant!" you said. "Here am I looking out of
window with a nice girl's arm round my waist, and right away from my
mother. She doesn't even know where I am!"

I loved my mother so much that this shocked me extremely, and I told
you so. You flushed, I remember, and cried:--

"Oh, but you don't know what my life is! You don't know what it is
to long with all your might to get away from somebody, somebody who
has hung over you ever since you were born, so that she seemed to
stand between you and the very air you breathed." And then you told
me about your marriage; how, in order to be free from her, you took
the husband, rich and infamous, into whose arms she threw you in
your innocence; how, at the end of a few months, you returned home
doubly a slave, to be crushed, year in, year out, by love that
showed itself almost as hate; bound now in such a way that if any
other love were offered you, you could not take it.

And how old are you now? Twenty-four. Still her puppet, her doll,
for that is what you are; she dresses and undresses you from morning
till night, then struts up and down the streets of Europe, showing
her pretty plaything. You say she has no thought but you, loves you
so much that it would break her heart if you left her. Look here,
Constance: you knew my mother; you know then what it means to live
nobly and truly in the light of a greater goodness than the world
yet understands. God, or whoever made you, made your soul very
white; how dare you let the smuts fall upon it? How dare you tread