untrue to them? It was because I saw you could sympathize with me
in these impulses that I said to myself, Here, at last, is the man
who can go through life as an aid and a spur to me. Don't tell me
I was mistaken; don't belie my belief. Be what I thought you were,
what I know you are. Work with me, and help me. Lift me! raise
me! exalt me! Take me on the sole terms on which I can give myself
up to you."

She stretched her arms out, pleading; she turned those subtle eyes
to him, appealingly. She was a beautiful woman. Alan Merrick was
human. The man in him gave way; he seized her in his clasp, and
pressed her close to his bosom. It heaved tumultuously. "I could
do anything for you, Herminia," he cried, "and indeed, I do
sympathize with you. But give me, at least, till to-morrow to
think this thing over. It is a momentous question; don't let us be
precipitate."

Herminia drew a long breath. His embrace thrilled through her.
"As you will," she answered with a woman's meekness. "But
remember, Alan, what I say I mean; on these terms it shall be, and
upon none others. Brave women before me have tried for awhile to
act on their own responsibility, for the good of their sex; but
never of their own free will from the very beginning. They have
avoided marriage, not because they thought it a shame and a
surrender, a treason to their sex, a base yielding to the unjust
pretensions of men, but because there existed at the time some
obstacle in their way in the shape of the vested interest of some
other woman. When Mary Godwin chose to mate herself with Shelley,
she took her good name in her hands; but still there was Harriet.
As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary showed she had no deep principle