"Yet surely women must not rebel against civilization. Civilization is
after all quite as largely as anything else a determined ignoring and
combatting on the part of mankind of the cruel disadvantages under
which nature has put women. No; we must look at it in the large; we
must hold to the conventional even, rather than fight against
civilization, however wrong and illogical and heartless civilization
may be. It is the best we have and we go to the wall without it."

She had reached her boarding-house and fitted her latch-key into the
lock. As she opened the door she looked back into the gathering dusk of
the misty afternoon, and her thought was almost as if it were a last
word flung to some presence to be left behind and shut out, a
personality with whom she had argued, and who had logically defeated
but not convinced her.

"And yet," she said inwardly, with a sudden swelling of defiance and
conviction, "not for all the universe could I have done it. I could not
go on living with Will,--though," she added, a sudden compunction
seizing her, "I was fond of him in a way, poor fellow."

And the door closed.




XI

THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART.
Macbeth; iv.--3.