At first he
refused--he only consented to do it when I threatened to go to my
father."
"What came of it in the end?"
"Why, my uncle wrote, and Douglas answered very kindly that he
understood, and that it was all right--I had nothing to fear. I
never expected to mention the incident to anyone again."
"Lots of people have mentioned such things to me," I responded, to
reassure her. Then after a pause: "Tell me, how was it, if you
didn't know the meaning of marriage, how could you connect the
disease with it?"
She answered, gazing with the wide-open, innocent eyes: "I had no
idea how people gave it to each other. I thought maybe they got it
by kissing."
I thought to myself again: The horror of this superstition of
prudery! Can one think of anything more destructive to life than the
placing of a taboo upon such matters? Here is the whole of the
future at stake--the health, the sanity, the very existence of the
race. And what fiend has been able to contrive it that we feel like
criminals when we mention the subject?
23. Our intimacy progressed, and the time came when Sylvia told me
about her marriage. She had accepted Douglas van Tuiver because she
had lost Frank Shirley, and her heart was broken.
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