should like to think of you here.
How nobly self-respecting you must be, to speak as you did! Our dreams
of heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality. I have been
lately thinking of myself as an outcast of my sex, and to have a good
woman liking me a little . . . loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I
should have kissed you, and not made this exhibition of myself--and if
you call it hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off
when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth together--if that idea of
jealousy had not been in your head. You had it from him."

"I have not alluded to it in any word that I can recollect."

"He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released. I have
noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on women as constant by their
nature. They are the needles, and he the magnet. Jealousy of you, Miss
Dale! Laetitia, may I speak?"

"Say everything you please."

"I could wish:--Do you know my baptismal name?"

"Clara."

"At last! I could wish . . . that is, if it were your wish. Yes, I
could wish that. Next to independence, my wish would be that. I risk
offending you. Do not let your delicacy take arms against me. I wish
him happy in the only way that he can be made happy. There is my
jealousy."

"Was it what you were going to say just now?"

"No."

"I thought not."

"I was going to say--and I believe the rack would not make me truthful
like you, Laetitia--well, has it ever struck you: remember, I do see
his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is
attractive, he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you
. . . I have no right to ask; I know that men must have faults, I do
not expect them to be saints; I am not one; I wish I were."

"Has it never struck me . . . ?" Laetitia prompted her.

"That very few women are able to be straightforwardly sincere in their
speech, however much they may desire to be?"

"They are differently educated. Great misfortune brings it to them."

"I am sure your answer is correct. Have you ever known a woman who was
entirely an Egoist?"

"Personally known one? We are not better than men."

"I do not pretend that we are. I have latterly become an Egoist,
thinking of no one but myself, scheming to make use of every soul I
meet. But then, women are in the position of inferiors. They are hardly
out of the nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and if they have
beauty, no wonder they turn it to a w