"We women are weak," replied Bimala. "So I suppose we must join
in the conspiracy of the weak."

"Women weak!" I exclaimed with a laugh. "Men belaud you as
delicate and fragile, so as to delude you into thinking
yourselves weak. But it is you women who are strong. Men make a
great outward show of their so-called freedom, but those who know
their inner minds are aware of their bondage. They have
manufactured scriptures with their own hands to bind themselves;
with their very idealism they have made golden fetters of women
to wind round their body and mind. If men had not that
extraordinary faculty of entangling themselves in meshes of their
own contriving, nothing could have kept them bound. But as for
you women, you have desired to conceive reality with body and
soul. You have given birth to reality. You have suckled reality
at your breasts."

Bee was well read for a woman, and would not easily give in to my
arguments. "If that were true," she objected, "men would not
have found women attractive."

"Women realize the danger," I replied. "They know that men love
delusions, so they give them full measure by borrowing their own
phrases. They know that man, the drunkard, values intoxication
more than food, and so they try to pass themselves off as an
intoxicant. As a matter of fact, but for the sake of man, woman
has no need for any make-believe."

"Why, then, are you troubling to destroy the illusion?"