"'That's American,' said Mrs. Sarafov, distinctly.
"'Not entirely,' I protested. 'It has a certain vogue in England also, I assure you. And personally,' I added, 'I am bound to say it makes a difference. I regret it.'
"'But,' said Mrs. Sarafov, and she turned her eyes upon her younger daughter, who was going out with some dishes, 'But she must have a man to look after her.' She regarded me attentively. 'I suppose you know that she is very fond of you. She is always talking about how kind you were to her on the ship. And in London. She says you liked her at first. And I can't see,' she went on, 'why, if you regret it, as you say, you didn't look after her yourself. She would have gone.'
"'And you think that would have made any difference?' I demanded. I was very much disturbed at this sudden turn of things. I seemed to be getting away from my cherished position as a super in the play. And it was the emotion educed from this conversation that revealed to me how these women had abandoned their life in America without regret. I had a vision of it suddenly as I looked at the other daughter's face. She was regarding me with a sort of raptness. The exquisite features glowed and the bright, bronze-coloured eyes burned above purple shadows like lamps above dark pools. Yes, I had a vision of it suddenly, and it was what we call, lightly, cynically, disapprovingly, Romance. It was simply this--that to them, what we deem a dangerous and useless appendage of our spiritual life is a tremendous and vital need. So tremendous and so vital that the external moral aspect of it was a matter of little importance. To put the case in point, they were interested in me not because I was a moral Englishman but because Artemisia was fond of me. It was for them as simple as breathing to go with the being one loved. And back of that there was another thing, which scared the modern and moral being within me still more. It followed, from their perfectly naïve and innocent faith in Romance, that a woman was not a political equal of man, a strenuous co-educated, enfranchised voter, but a possession. The crown of her achievement was to be possessed by the man she loved. He might kill her or enslave her, but without men she was of no importance whatever. And I suspected that my own attitude which, mind you, is the attitude of most of us, to draw away at the approach of a compromising emotion, was difficult to comprehend. Especially when, in response to the inevitable question, I said I wasn't married or promised. They harped on it, those two, while the younger girl was in the kitchen. It was evident Artemisia had confided a great deal to them and they had talked and talked, turning this peculiar problem over in their minds, the problem of a man who persisted in remaining a super in the play. Barbarous of them? Well, let us say mediæval. They lived in a world of harsh limitations and extraordinary latitudes. They were forbidden divorce and were accustomed to neighbours with a plurality of wives. They seemed to know nothing of the refinements of modern passion. For them it was a question of sex, without any admixture of social or racial distinctions. That Artemisia had had a lover in England was not a matter of amazement to them at all. What they couldn't understand was the reason why everything had to be driven underground. And the extremely _bourgeois_ conception of love culminating in a colourless civil contract between a good provider and a capable housekeeper, which was all they could see in American institutions--a civil contract which could apparently be shot to pieces upon any frivolous pretext, struck their mediæval minds as profoundly irreligious and unpleasant.