It is the right of womanhood to bestow favors. It is a woman's right
to be honored above all creatures of earth. Since the beginning of
life itself her sex has been so honored--has received the offerings
from life. Mankind, alone, has at times attempted to change this law
but has never quite succeeded. Mankind never can fully succeed in this
because woman holds life itself in her keeping. So the woman felt that
her womanhood was humiliated and shamed. But she hid this feeling
also, hid it carefully, buried it deeply, because she knew that if she
did not it would betray her and she would not be permitted to remain
in the world into which necessity forced her. To the woman, it seemed
that the world into which she had gone, itself, felt her shame and
humiliation. That, in secret, it desired to ask of her; to accord to
her honors; to seek her with offerings. But this world could not do
these things because it dared not recognize her womanhood. When a
woman goes into that world into which she must go alone, she leaves
her womanhood behind. Her womanhood is not received there.

But most of all, the thing that troubled the woman was this: the risk
she ran in entering into that life behind the door at which she had
sought admittance. She saw that there was danger there--grave
danger--to her womanhood. In the busy, ceaseless, activity of that
life there would be little time for her waiting beside the old, old,
door. The exacting demands of her work, or profession, or calling, or
business, would leave little leisure for the meditation and reflection
that is so large a part of the preparation necessary for entrance into
that other world of which she had dreamed. Constant contact with the
unemotional facts and figures of that life which sets a market value
upon the sacred things of womanhood would make it ever more difficult
for her to dream of love. There was grave danger that interest and