Early this morning I had a dream I have been trying all day to forget.
Through the first part of the night sleep had been impossible. The
haunting memory of Lillie's eyes could not be shut out, and the sound
of her voice made the stillness of the room unendurable. I tried to
read, to write, to do anything but think. I fought, resisted; refused
to face what I did not want to see, to listen to what I did not want to
hear; and not until the dawn of a new day did I fall asleep.

In my dream Lillie was in front of me, the bit of wall-flower in her
hands, and gaspingly she cried out that something should be done.

"It can never be made clean, the world we women live in. But there
should never be such worlds. Good women pretend they do not know.
They do not want to know!"

"But, Lillie"--I tried to hold her twisting, writhing hands. "There is
much that has been done. Some women do know, and homes and
institutions and societies--"

"Homes and institutions and societies!" She drew her hands away in
scornful gesture. "They are poultice and plaster things. They are for
surface sores, and the trouble is in the blood. To cure, to cleanse,
undo the evil of our world is not in human power. It's the root of the
tree that must be killed. You can cut off its top for a thousand years
and it will come back again. Women have got to go deeper than that and
make men know that they'll be damned the same as we if they sin the
same as we do."

She was slipping from me and I tried to hold her back. "Tell me what
women must do! Tell me where they fail!" In terror I caught her