Then I once again pondered events past, reviewing them in my mind: “How often has vanity seduced women into leaving poor men and attaching themselves to rich men, for the craving that women have for fine clothes and luxury blinds them and leads them to dishonor and degradation. But was Rose al-Hani deceived by vanity and covetousness when she left the palace of a rich man, a palace packed with ornaments, fine clothing, and servants, to go to a poor man’s hut containing nothing but a shelf of old books? How often has ignorance killed the honor of a woman and revived her passions so that she abandoned her husband out of boredom and spite and sought the pleasures of the body with another man more debased and less honorable than her? Was Rose al-Hani ignorant, did she desire only the pleasures of the body when she openly proclaimed her independence before witnesses and attached herself to a youth of spiritual inclinations? In her husband’s house she might have sated her desires in secret with besotted young men willing to destroy themselves as slaves to her beauty, as martyrs to their lust for her. Rose al-Hani was an unhappy woman who sought happiness, who found it, who embraced it. This is the truth that human society despises and the law denies.”

I whispered these words into the ears of the æther, then asked myself, “But is it permissible for a woman to make her husband’s misery the price of her happiness?” My own soul answered me, “Is it allowable for a man to enslave his wife’s affections for his own happiness?”