"Ah! when you ask me that, you get to the first cause of the trouble,"
she answered. "The truth is that we have lost faith in our men. They
claim some superiority for themselves, but we find none. The age
requires people to practise what they preach, and yet expects us to be
guided by the counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered
them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to
go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually--
either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death
of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon
ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature.
Do you wonder that some of us ask: Why should we keep ourselves pure if
impurity is to be our bedfellow? You make us breathe corruption, and
wonder that we lose our health."

"But why do you talk of the death of manliness? Men have as much
courage now as they ever had."

"Oh, of course--mere animal courage; there is plenty of that, but that
is nothing. A cat will fight for her kittens. It is moral courage that
makes a man, and where do you find it now? Are men self-denying? Are
they scrupulous to a shadow of the truth? Are they disinterested? How
many _gentlemen_ have you met in the course of your life? I know about
half a dozen."

"What do you call a gentleman, then?" I asked in surprise. "What makes
a man one?"

"Why, truth and affection, of course," she answered; "the one is the
most ennobling, and the other the most refining quality. As a child I