Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/277

272 "Do you think," she asked, "that a married man has a moral right to love a woman who is not his wife?"

"Undoubtedly, when the woman who is his wife has ceased to care for him. The marriage contract is binding in conscience, and should be in law, only so long as love lasts between the parties to it. You are a socialist. You know what our doctrine is. In the coming socialist commonwealth there will be no permanent marriage bond. It will be a bond that can be dissolved at will. It will accommodate itself to the happiness of those affected by it. That's the doctrine of Marx and Bebel and Belfort Bax. Then a man will be legally as well as morally free to put off a dead love and take on a living one. It's a living love that, with your help, I shall take on to-night."

She appeared to drink in his words.

"And what about the woman?" she asked; "the woman who loves a married man? Has she a right to do that? Has she a right, if the time should be opportune, to tell him so?"

"It's the right of every woman to seek happiness where she can find it; to ask for it if she will; it's her duty to take it when it's offered to her, as I offer it to you to-night."

"And, Steve, if a man's wife is nothing to him, if she has no sympathy with him, if she's a millstone about his neck, and he can have the love of another woman who is fond of him, oh, passionately fond of him, do you think it would be wrong for either of them to give himself to—to give herself unreservedly to the other? Do you, Steve? Do you?"

She was leaning toward him, eager, excited, her eyes glowing, her lips parted, her white teeth gleaming, her breast heaving with emotion. To the man who craved her she was wildly fascinating. He had never before seen her when she so appealed to every atom of his nature. Drawn irresistibly, he moved closer to her.