A
woman may believe that she herself has accomplished the impossible, but
she knows no one of her sisters has."
She smiled sadly and yet humorously, pausing a moment on the curbstone
before crossing the wet and icy street. Then as she went on and a
coachman pulled up his horses almost upon their haunches to let her
pass, she took up the thread of her reflections once more,--
"Yet surely women must not rebel against civilization. Civilization is
after all quite as largely as anything else a determined ignoring and
combatting on the part of mankind of the cruel disadvantages under
which nature has put women. No; we must look at it in the large; we
must hold to the conventional even, rather than fight against
civilization, however wrong and illogical and heartless civilization
may be. It is the best we have and we go to the wall without it."
She had reached her boarding-house and fitted her latch-key into the
lock. As she opened the door she looked back into the gathering dusk of
the misty afternoon, and her thought was almost as if it were a last
word flung to some presence to be left behind and shut out, a
personality with whom she had argued, and who had logically defeated
but not convinced her.
"And yet," she said inwardly, with a sudden swelling of defiance and
conviction, "not for all the universe could I have done it.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108