would you do if you were in my place?"

"My advice you will hardly heed, and I do
not even know that it would be well if you did.
But if I were a man in your position, I should
break with my whole past, start out into the
world where nobody knew me, and where I
should be dependent only upon my own strength,
and there I would conquer a place for myself,
if it were only for the satisfaction of knowing
that I was really a man. Here cushions are
sewed under your arms, a hundred invisible
threads bind you to a life of idleness and
vanity, everybody is ready to carry you on his
hands, the road is smoothed for you, every stone
carefully moved out of your path, and you will
probably go to your grave without having ever
harbored one earnest thought, without having
done one manly deed."

Ralph stood transfixed, gazing at her with
open mouth; he felt a kind of stupid fright, as
if some one had suddenly seized him by the
shoulders and shaken him violently. He tried
vainly to remove his eyes from Bertha. She
held him as by a powerful spell. He saw that
her face was lighted with an altogether new
beauty; he noticed the deep glow upon her
cheek, the brilliancy of her eye, the slight
quiver of her lip. But he saw all this as one