here are two pictures of free love!

"after all, what is life for me? strange doors in strange houses, strange men and strange intimacies. sometimes weirdly grotesque and incredibly beastly. the secret vileness of human nature flung at me. man revealing himself, through individual after individual, as utterly contemptible. i tell you, my dear eager fool, it is beyond my conception ever to regard a man as higher than a frog, as less repulsive."

it is a cry from mr. compton mackenzie's glittering land of many, and strange, sins—surely a nightmare of hell itself; cry of the gallant sylvia scarlett, writing her own epitaph—"here lies sylvia scarlett who was always running away."

on the surface, indeed, it is a gay enough scene mr. mackenzie has painted for us, when "her arm was twined round him like ivy, and their two hands came together like leaves."

[73]glittering and hot in the first flush of adventure, we see youth's brave curiosity endlessly awake. yet it was cold, hard, and "strange" at the core: always, everywhere, a "stranger" upon the earth. sylvia "was always running away"—from men and from herself; so weary, so hurt, and so afraid. for there was none to share the burden and the joy, no footing for her; nothing to hold on to and steady life, no future to build: weary and restless and alone. she could never stay anywhere, with anyone; searching for ever, for she knows not what. for "life, which means freedom and space and movement, she is willing to pay with utter loneliness at the end."

for the wanderers there is no end we dare tell. mr. mackenzie has "a jolly conception of the adventurous men of london, with all its sly and labyrinthine romance"; but has he ever thought of following beside any of the men and women who flutter across his page—we cannot say to their homes, for they have none? dare he live with "the muslin and patchouli, the aspidestras and yellowing photographs, as in unseen basements children whined, while on the mantelpiece garish vases rattled to the vibration of the traffic"; or with mrs. smith "creeping about the stairs [74]like a spider?" dare he see his shrewd, bright daisy die?

to the novelist, indeed, they do not matter. they have played their part in his drama, and may shuffle off to the wings. they are human beings in real life. and for the truth about them, we could tell such a dreary, monotonous, bitter and tragic sheaf of "lonely lives." we should show them to you, wandering round and round, in and out, under bright lights or behind dark corners; every year more weak and frightened, till strength fails them even for movement without hope, and they slip away into some silent pond.

and finally, from the first, if all love means constant change to revive passion, a life of continual experiment in emotion; we dare not face the child.

novelists to-day, indeed, have given much thought to children. "you know," wrote mr. mackenzie, "that if i were to set down all i could remember of my childhood the work would not yet have reached beyond the fifth year." they all often remember much, with rare understanding and delicate insight. heroes and heroines, to-day, are introduced to us in the cradle, and for many a chapter remain nursery-bound. but, curiously [75]enough, we meet them all at home, in a family group. every one of the "newest" men and women, in modern novels, were brought up by their parents (or nearest relatives), and did inherit the great gift of influences they make no attempt to hand on. to fight fate they had, at least, the traditional defence: a self moulded by a mother's and father's love.

fiction has not yet faced the offspring of free love.

they are still, however, bravely inspired by visions of mother-love. the faith and loyalty they forbid to lovers, is still honoured in sons. how many of mr. cannan's young heroines, for instance, could ever have mothered his own renè fourny or the "three pretty men." the mrs. morel of d. h. lawrence, most passionately tempestuous of all the moderns, comes very near to the ideal. few women have lived more absolutely or continuously for, and in, their child. yet few women can have had better excuse or more temptation to desertion, greater need for a new start. here was no love and no home, save what she made by loyal constancy to the building up of the child she had borne.

who would condemn more fiercely, and with more bitter tears, the teaching of these [76]men than the great mothers they have so nobly created?

there would be none such in life so lived.

could any novelist have drawn for us a more mad picture of the emotions aroused by sex-licence than may be read in the jewel in the lotus by rosita forbes? the heroine, corona, "who paints, you know," is not, professionally, a gay woman. she had, perhaps justifiably, divorced her first husband; and achieved something like real love with a spanish catholic, whose religion alone prevented the legal sanction. he, however, died suddenly before the story opens; and "from that time corona deliberately cut away the soft side of life . . . she fought her lonely battle and she won."

but "she did not attempt to shut sex out of her life again. on the contrary, there were many incidents in many countries, but to no single lover did she give any part of her soul. for a little while they drifted into her life, fulfilling the need her loneliness had of companionship. she paid the price asked for affection, sympathy, kindness, and it left no mark on her. sometimes passion took her and she loved like a man for a time and then forgot, but nothing [77]and no one interfered with the strange, new force she was developing."

"at thirty-five she was a woman, strong, courageous, intelligent, a brilliant conversationalist"—in fact, a popular society queen. her "existence had been an orgy of sensation."

then the boy, gerald, came into her life. he had a "wonderful" mother: "there's nothing i would not tell her, nothing that we do not talk over." it was his plan, and hers, for him not to marry "for ages, not for ten years, if then. you see, i want to make my castle first. then i will ask someone to live in it. i want to give my wife everything. i want to stick her up in the public view and just arrange things for her quietly."

but his mother was "broad-minded." when "she sees a woman obviously happy, she feels that she probably has a lover." she "wouldn't want all the best" of her son's life. "she knows i don't mean to marry, and she knows also that no man goes very far without a woman in his life."

and, not "necessarily, in the background. i can imagine a very great friendship developing into something more passionate while one was young and impulsive, and then slipping [78]gradually back into a wonderful comradeship."

"and," he added, "i should never marry a woman who would mind my having friends!"

all this he tells corona—"very quietly and simply"; and then, "kissing her face swiftly, hotly, . . . till she bit him"; with incredible naivete, explains that he had talked about her with his mother—"she feels i should be safe with you" and "she would be a good friend to my mistress."

in her first blaze of anger and scorn corona spits out: "i suppose sir henry is your mother's lover"; and the boy cries, "no, he is not! how dare you suggest it? my mother is much too fine a woman to have a lover. she never had one and never will have."

this is the truth none can escape: the one answer possible for any decent boy: the inspiration of all the youth of all ages, who have made for us a fair world, illumined by faith, courage, and hope.