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THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL 199
A fancy-dress ball, for instance, was given at the
theatre, and I had her promise not to attend the ball in
male attire. She had bound herself by a solemn oath, for
I had been very emphatic on the subject. On the morn-
ing after the ball I was told that she had not only broken
her promise, but that she had gone to supper later on
with some of her male friends.
I was angry because she had lied to me, and the thought
of the subsequent supper made me feel uneasy.
"Well," she replied, when I expostulated with her,
" am I not free to please myself? "
"No, you are a married woman! You bear my name,
and we are responsible to each other. Whenever you
compromise yourself, you compromise me, and, in fact,
you do me a greater injury than you do yourself."
"That means that I am not free?
"
" Nobody can be absolutely free in a community where
every individual is inextricably mixed up with the fate
of others. Supposing I had invited some women friends
to supper, what would you have said?
"
She insisted that she was free to do as she liked ; that
she was at liberty, if she felt so inclined, to ruin my
reputation ; that her freedom was, in fact, absolute. She
was a savage ; freedom, as she interpreted it, was the rule
of an autocrat who trampled the honour and happiness
of her fellow creatures into the dust.
This scene, which began with a quarrel, led to floods
of tears and ended with hysterics, was followed by another
which made me feel even more uneasy, more especially as
I was not sufficiently initiated into the secrets of sexual
life to deal with its anomalies, which terrified me, like all
anomalies which are difficult of explanation.
One evening, when the maid was busy making up
Marie’s bed for the night, I heard a half-suppressed
scream and smothered laughter, as if some one were being
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