Three Women
that they stand Side by side, in God's eyes, with the Magdalene band. Dear Maurice, be my brother, my counselor, friend. We are lonely without you and Ruth, at Bay Bend. Come sometimes and brighten our lives; put away The thoughts which are making you restless to-day And give me your strong noble friendship; indeed 'Tis a friend that I crave, not a lover I need. 

 Maurice to Mabel. 

 You write like a woman, and one, it is plain, Whose sentiment hangs like a cloud o'er her brain. You gaze through a sort of traditional mist, And behold a mirage of God's laws which exist But in fancy. God made but one law—it is love. A law for the earth, and the kingdoms above, A law for the woman, a law for the man, The base and the spire of His intricate plan Of existence. All evils the world ever saw Had birth in man's breaking away from this law. God cancels a marriage when love flies away. "Till death do us part" should be altered to say, "Till disgust or indifference part us."  I know You never loved Roger, my heart tells me so. 

 He won you, I claim, through a mesmeric spell; You dreamed of an Eden, and wakened in hell. You pitied his weakness, you struggled to save him, He paid with a crime the devotion you gave him. And the blackest of insults relentlessly hurled At your poor patient heart in the gaze of the world. In God's mighty ledger the stroke of a pen Has been drawn through your record of marriage. Though men Call you wedded I hold you are widowed. Why cling To the poor, empty, meaningless form of a thing— To the letter, devoid of all spirit? God never Intended a woman to hopelessly sever Herself from all possible joy, or to make True faithfulness suffer for faithlessness' sake. When I think of your wrongs, when I think of my woes, That black word divorce like a bright planet glows In the skies of the future. Oh, Mabel, be fair To yourself and to me. For the years of despair I have suffered you owe me some recompense, surely. The heart that has worshipped so long and so purely Ought not to be slighted for mere sentiment. We must live as our century bids us. Its bent Is away from the worn ruts of thought. Where of old The life of a woman was run in the mold Of man's wishes and passions, to-day she is free; Free to think and to act; free to do and to be What she pleases. The poor, pining victim of fate And man's cruelty, long ago went out of date. In the mansion of Life there were some things askew, Which the strong hand of Progress has righted. The new, Better plan puts old notions of sex on the shelf. Who is true to a knave, is untrue to herself. Oh, be true to yourself, and have pity on one Who has 
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