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MARRIAGE AS A TRADE

rules of life and conduct. As such it is entirely your own possession and a creation, a thing of which no one can rob you but yourself; it is at no man's mercy but your own. It is because woman, as a rule, has not possessed the power of giving voluntary and conscious adherence to rules of life and conduct, because the rules of life and conduct which she follows have been framed in the interests of others and forced upon her in the interests of others—that she has been denied any other than a purely physical and accidental "honour."

One's mind goes back to two children in the school-room pondering seriously and in the light of their own unaided logic the puzzling story of Lucrece—much expurgated and newly acquired during the course of a Roman history lesson. The expurgated Roman history book had made it clear that she was a woman greatly to be admired; we sat with knitted brows and argued why. Something had been done to her—we were vague as to the nature of the something, but had gathered from the hurried manner of our instructress that here was a subject on which you must not ask for precise information. Our igno-