embled, the fire ran
through her. It seemed to her, that she would be called to help or that
certainly they were nearing to an effacement of the woefullest of evils;
and if not helping, it would still be a blessedness for her to kneel
thanking heaven.

Society was being attacked and defended. She could but studiously listen.
Her father was listening. The assailant was a lady; and she had a
hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial
for an offence against a more precious: viz., the individual cramped by
brutish laws: the individual with the ideas of our time, righteously
claiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow old-world
disciplinarian-that giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet at externally
venerable Institutions; and she had a hearing, where horrification,
execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in a shortly antecedent
day have been hissing and snakily lashing, hounding her to expulsion.
Mrs. Marina Floyer gravely seconded her. Colney did the same. Victor
turned sharp on him. 'Yes,' Colney said; 'we unfold the standard of
extremes in this country, to get a single step taken: that's how we move:
we threaten death to get footway. Now, mark: Society's errors will be
admitted.'

A gentleman spoke. He began by admitting Society's errors. Nevertheless,
it so distinctly exists for the common good, that we may say of Society
in relation to the individual, it is the body to the soul. We may wash,
trim, purify, but we must not maim it. The assertion of our individuality
in opposition to the Government of Society--this existing Society--is a
toss of the cap for the erasure of our civilization, et caetera.

Platitudes can be of intense interest if they approach our case.--But, if
you please, we ask permission to wash, trim, purify, and we do not get
it.--But you have it! Because we take it at our peril; and you, who are
too cowardly to grant or withhold, call-up the revolutionary from the
pits by your slackness:--etc. There was a pretty hot debate. Both
assailant and defendant, to Victor's thinking, spoke well, and each the
right thing and he could have made use of both, but he could answer
neither. He beat about for the cause of this deficiency, and discovered
it in his position. Mentally, he was on the side of Society. Yet he was
annoyed to find the attack was so easily answerable when the defence
unfolded. But it was absurd to expect it would not be. And in fact, a
position s