s her
acknowledged principal! As true as I had once a mother whom I loved,
were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the social stand
which some of them,--poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only
dream of such things because they have missed woman's peculiar
happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor
woman!--if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these
petticoated monstrosities have in view, I would call upon my own sex to
use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty, to
scourge them back within their proper bounds! But it will not be
needful. The heart of time womanhood knows where its own sphere is,
and never seeks to stray beyond it!"

Never was mortal blessed--if blessing it were--with a glance of such
entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its completeness,
as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth. She
seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood
over it in perfect content. The very woman whom he pictured--the
gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more powerful existence--sat
there at his feet.

I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent--as I felt,
by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought this
outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine
egotism. It centred everything in itself, and deprived woman of her
very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere
incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had boldly uttered
what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt. Without
intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these troubled
waters. Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the champion of
her sex.

But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled. Some
tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger.

"Well, be it so," was all she said. "I, at least, have deep cause to
think you right. Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only
too ready to become to him what you say!"

I smiled--somewhat bitterly, it is true--in contemplation of my own
ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely
conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of
my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible
injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet!

"Women al