fiery purpose, that astounded and subdued a young creature in whom
inherited germs of southern energy and passion were only waiting the
touch that starts the ferment. Gertrude Marvell had read an amazing
amount of history, and all from one point of view; that of the woman
stirred to a kind of madness by what she held to be the wrongs of her
sex. The age-long monopoly of all the higher forces of civilisation by
men; the cruel and insulting insistence upon the sexual and maternal
functions of women, as covering the whole of her destiny; the hideous
depreciation of her as an inferior and unclean creature, to which
Christianity, poisoned by the story of Eve, and a score of barbarous
beliefs and superstitions more primitive still, had largely
contributed, while hypocritically professing to enfranchise and exalt
her; the unfailing doom to "obey," and to bring forth, that has crushed
her; the labours and shames heaped upon her by men in the pursuit of
their own selfish devices; and the denial to her, also by men, of all
the higher and spiritual activities, except those allowed by a man-made
religion:--this feminist gospel, in some respects so bitterly true, in
others so vindictively false, was gradually and unsparingly pressed
upon Delia's quick intelligence. She caught its fire; she rose to its
call; and there came a day when Gertrude Marvell breaking through the
cold reserve she had hitherto interposed between herself and the pupil
who had come to adore her, threw her arms round the girl, accepting
from her what were practically the vows of a neophyte in a secret and
revolutionary service.

Joyous, self-dedicating moment! But it had been followed by a tragedy;
the tragedy of Delia's estrangement from her father. It was not long
before Sir Robert Blanchflower, a proud self-indulgent man, with a keen
critical sense, a wide acquaintance with men and affairs, and a number
of miscellaneous acquirements of which he never made the smallest