Chapter 4 - Page 2

her sister women? Even if she felt brave enough to try the
experiment herself for humanity's sake, was it not his duty as a
man to protect her from her own sublime and generous impulses? Is
it not for that in part that nature makes us virile? We must
shield the weaker vessel. He was flattered not a little that this
leader among women should have picked him out for herself among the
ranks of men as her predestined companion in her chosen task of
emancipating her sex. And he was thoroughly sympathetic (as every
good man must needs be) with her aims and her method. Yet, still
he hesitated. Never before could he have conceived such a problem
of the soul, such a moral dilemma possible. It rent heart and
brain at once asunder. Instinctively he felt to himself he would
be doing wrong should he try in any way to check these splendid and
unselfish impulses which led Herminia to offer herself willingly up
as a living sacrifice on behalf of her enslaved sisters everywhere.
Yet the innate feeling of the man, that 'tis his place to protect
and guard the woman, even from her own higher and purer self,
intervened to distract him. He couldn't bear to feel he might be
instrumental in bringing upon his pure Herminia the tortures that
must be in store for her; he couldn't bear to think his name might
be coupled with hers in shameful ways, too base for any man to
contemplate.

And then, intermixed with these higher motives, came others that he
hardly liked to confess to himself where Herminia was concerned,
but which nevertheless would obtrude themselves, will he, nill he,
upon him. What would other people say about such an innocent union
as Herminia contemplated? Not indeed, "What effect would it have
upon his position and prospects?" Alan Merrick's place as a
barrister was fairly well assured, and the Bar is luckily one of
the few professions in lie-loving England where a man need not
grovel at the mercy of the moral judgment of the meanest and
grossest among his fellow-creatures, as is the case with the
Church, with medicine, with the politician, and with the
schoolmaster. But Alan could not help thinking all the same how
people would misinterpret and misunderstand his relations with the
woman he loved, if he modelled them strictly upon Herminia's
wishes. It was hateful, it was horrible to have to con the thing
over, where that faultless soul was concerned, in the vile and
vulgar terms other people would apply to it; but for Herminia's
sake, con it over so he must; and though he shrank from the effort
with a deadly shrinking, he nevertheless faced it. Men at the
clubs would say he had seduced Herminia. Men at the clubs would
lay the whole blame of the episode upon him; and he couldn't bear
to be