valued in dollars, worth a certain price upon the woman labor market
in the business world.

And the woman's heart, because she knew herself to be a woman,
rebelled at this buying and selling the things of her womanhood. These
things she rightly felt to be above price--far, far, above price. They
were the things of her wifehood and motherhood. They were given her to
be used by her in love, in mating, in bearing and rearing children, in
the giving of life to the world.

The things of a woman's womanhood are as far above price as life
itself to which they belong. Even as color and perfume belong to the
flowers; even as the music of the birds belongs to the feathery
songsters; even as the blue belongs to the sky, and the light to the
stars; so these graces of a woman belong to her and to the mission of
her womanhood are sacred. They are hers to be used in her holy office
of womanhood; by her alone, without price, for the glory and honor of
life and the future of the race. So the woman's heart rebelled, but
secretly, instinctively, almost unconsciously. Open rebellion would
have made it impossible for her to remain in the world into which she
entered because of her necessity and the custom of the age.

She found, too, that this world into which she had entered was very
courteous, that it was even considerate and kind--as considerate and
kind as it was possible to be--for it seemed to understand her
position quite as well as she herself understood it. And this world
paid her very well for the services she was asked to render. But it
asked of her no favors. It accorded her no honors. It sought her with
no offering. And, because of this, the woman, in the heart of her
womanhood, felt ashamed and humiliated.