Of her Occupation--of the world into which she had gone--the woman
also was gaining Knowledge. Though, she did not learn from choice but
because she must. And she learned of her work only what was needful
for her to know that she might hold her place. She had no desire to
know more. Because the woman already knew the supreme thing, she had
no desire to learn more of her Occupation than she must. Already she
knew her womanhood, and that, to a woman who knows, is the supreme
thing. For a woman with understanding there is no Knowledge greater
than this: the knowledge of her womanhood. There was born in her no
passion for knowledge of things. She burned with no desire to follow
the golden chain, link by link, to its hidden end. In her womanhood
she held already the answer to the sum of Life.

The passion of her womanhood was not to _know_ but to _trust_--not
_facts_ but _faith_--not _evidence_ but _belief_--not _reason_ but
_emotion_. Her desire was not to take from the world by the power
of Knowledge but to receive from the world by right of her sex and love.
She did not crave the independence of great learning but longed, rather,
for the prouder dependence of a true womanhood. Out of her woman heart's
fullness she pitied and fed the poor mendicant without inquiring into
the economic condition that made him a beggar. Her situation, she
accepted with secret rebellion, with hidden shame and humiliation
in her heart, but never asked why the age forced her into such a
position. For affection, for sympathy, for confidence, and understanding,
she hungered with a woman hunger; and, through her hunger for these,
from the men and women with whom she labored she gained Knowledge of
Life. Of the lives of her fellow workers--of the women who had entered
that world, even as she had entered it, because they must--of the men
whom she came to know under circumstances that forbade recognition of