Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/80

 of men whose love has ceased with the gratification of their lusts. An equal standard of purity for men and women; an equal condemnation, or an equal charity, will do much to lessen immorality and self-indulgence.

If the word "comrade" means anything at all, it will mean more, vastly more, when it is used by a man to his wife and when she can speak it to him. Perfect equality alone means perfect happiness and contentment. The latter does not necessarily include the former. There are many content to-day who are not happy. The saddest feature of woman's enslavement is that she grows contented so; but not happy. The most frivolous doll-woman, the indulged wife of a doting husband who gives her everything she asks for, all that she could desire, but denies her, herself, must feel at times a terrible sense of loss, of wanting something, of missing something; of something short in her life, something she ought to have. An anonymous and touchingly sad poem reveals the heart-ache and echoes the heart-cries of ten thousand women, who sit still at the feet of Fate even whilst their spirits rebel.