enthusiasm in other things would supplant her longing for wifehood and
motherhood. She feared that in her Occupation she might not know, when
he came, that one who was to cross the threshold with her into the
life of her dreams--that, indeed, he might come and go again while she
was busy with other things. She feared that she would come to accept
the commercial valuation of the things that belonged to her womanhood
and thus forget their higher, holier, use and that the continued
rejection of her womanhood would, in time, lead her to think of it
lightly, as incidental rather than supreme. There was real danger that
she would lose her desire to be sought, to give, to receive offerings;
that she would cease to rebel secretly; that she would no longer feel
humiliated at her position. She feared in short this danger--the
gravest danger to her womanhood and thus to all that womankind holds
in her keeping--that she would come to feel contented, satisfied, and
happy, in being a part of the world into which she was forced to go by
the custom of the age and by necessity. Because this woman knew
herself to be a woman she feared this. If she had not come to know her
womanhood she would not have feared it. Neither would it have
mattered.

The woman was thinking of these things that Saturday afternoon as she
walked homeward from her work. She often walked to her home on
Saturday afternoons, when there was time, for she was strong and
vigorous, with an abundance of good red woman blood in her veins, and
loved the free movement in the open air.

Perhaps, though, it is not exact to say that she was _thinking_
of these things. The better word would be _feeling_. She was not
thinking of them as I have set them down: but she was feeling them
all. She was conscious of them, just as she was conscious of the dead