"All forms of contract--in business, education, religion, or law--suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making them--the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the others."
"Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it."
"Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations."
Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slender figure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her a threatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defenceless sleep.
She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of a new licence--a lawless law--was in her veins. Have women been trampled on, insulted, enslaved?--in America, at least, they may now stand on their feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty of men. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great human workshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in the majority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief. And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less of life and the world than the average man. She is more likely--poor soul!--to make mistakes.
She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture and appointments of a costly room--the silver and tortoise-shell on the dressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silk hangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money could make it--the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creature who had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to an irrevocable purpose.
Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would free herself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect and deceit--his disagreeable and ungrateful mother--his immoral friends--and this dull, soul-deadening English life.
Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at him fixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, and very often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was _her_ child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sense than to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marry again.