eyes was memorable, a light above the rolling oceans of
Time.
She had given him her life, little aid. She might have closely
counselled, wound in and out with his ideas. Sensible of capacity, she
confessed to the having been morally subdued, physically as well; swept
onward; and she was arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the
river-floods by the dip of a branch. Time that it should be! But was not
Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system for the education of
women, right when he declared them to be unfitted to speak an opinion on
any matter external to the household or in a crisis of the household? She
had not agreed with him: he presented stinging sentences, which irritated
more than they enlightened. Now it seemed to her, that the model women of
men make pleasant slaves, not true mates: they lack the worldly training
to know themselves or take a grasp of circumstances.
There is an exotic fostering of the senses for women, not the
strengthening breath of vital common air. If good fortune is with them,
all may go well: the stake of their fates is upon the perpetual smooth
flow of good fortune. She had never joined to the cry of the women. Few
among them were having it in the breast as loudly.
Hard on herself, too, she perceived how the social rebel had reduced her
mind to propitiate a simulacrum, reflected from out, of an enthroned
Society within it, by an advocacy of the existing laws and rules and
habits. Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker: none so
conservative. Not until we are driven back upon an unviolated Nature, do
we call to the intellect to think radically: and then we begin to think
of our fellows.
Or when we have set ourselves in motion direct for the doing of the right
thing: have quitted the carriage at the station, and secured the ticket,
and entered the train, counting the passage of time for a simple rapid
hour before we have eased heart in doing justice to ourself and to
another; then likewise the mind is lighted for radiation. That doing of
the right thing, after a term of paralysis, cowardice--any evil name--is
one of the mighty reliefs, equal to happiness, of longer duration.
Nataly had it. But her mind was actually radiating, and the comfort to
her heart evoked the image of Dartrey Fenellan. She saw a possible reason
for her bluntness to the coming scene with Dudley.
At once she said, No! and closed the curtain; knowing what was behind,
counting it nought.
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