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Who was the first woman who found out that she could sell her favour? And who was the woman who discovered that man is a buyer? Whoever she was, she was the founder of marriage and prostitution. And they say that marriages are made in heaven!

He realised his degradation and hers. She wanted to triumph over her friends, to be the first woman who had taken an active share in the making of her country’s laws; for the sake of this triumph she had sold herself.

Well, he would tear the mask from her face. He would show her what she really was. He would tell her that prostitution could never be abolished while women found an advantage in selling themselves.

With his mind firmly made up, he got out of bed and dressed.

He had to wait a little for her in the dining-room. He rehearsed the scene which would follow and pulled himself together to meet her.

She came in calm, smiling, triumphant, but more beautiful than he had ever seen her before. A sombre fire burnt in her eyes, and he, who had expected that she would meet him with blushes and down-cast eyes, was crushed. She was the triumphant seducer, and he the bashful victim.

The words he had meant to say refused to come. Disarmed and humble he went to meet her and kissed her hand.

She talked as usual without the slightest indication that a new factor had entered her life.

He went to the House, fuming, with her bill in his pocket, and only the vision of the bliss in store for him, calmed his excited nerves.

But when, in the evening, he knocked quite boldly at her door, it remained closed.

It remained closed for three weeks. He cringed before her like a dog, obeyed every hint, fulfilled all her wishes–it was all in vain.

Then his indignation got the better of him and he overwhelmed her with a flood of angry words. She answered him sharply. But when she realised that she had gone too far, that his chain was wearing thin, she gave herself to him.

And he wore his chain. He bit it, strained every nerve to break it, but it held.

She soon learned how far she could go, and whenever he became restive, she yielded.

He was seized with a fanatical longing to make her a mother. He thought it might make a woman of her, bring out all that was good and wholesome in her. But the future seemed to hold no promise on that score.

Had ambition, the selfish passion of the individual, destroyed the source of life? He wondered….

One morning she informed him that she was going away for a few days to stay with her friends.

When he came home on the evening of the day of her departure and found the house empty, his soul was tormented by a cruel feeling of loss and longing. All of a sudden it became clear to him that he loved her with every fibre of his being. The house seemed desolate; it was just as if a funeral had taken place. When dinner was served he stared at her vacant chair and hardly touched his food.

After supper he lit the chandelier in the drawing-room. He sat down in her corner of the sofa. He fingered her needlework which she had left behind–it was a tiny jacket for a stranger’s baby in a newly-founded creche. There was the needle, still sticking in the calico, just as she had left it. He pricked his finger with it as if to find solace in the ecstasy of pain.

Presently he lighted a candle and went into her bedroom. As he stood on the threshold, he shaded the flame with his hand and looked round like a man who is about to commit a crime. The room did not betray the slightest trace of femininity. A narrow bed without curtains; a writing-table, bookshelves, a smaller table by the side of her bed, a sofa. Just like his own room. There was no dressing-table, but a little mirror hung on the wall.