into account their inexorable desire for domination; the
subtle cohesion existent among them which, at moments, becomes like a
wall of adamant barring, limiting, inclosing and forcing women toward
the deep-worn grooves which women have trodden through the sad
centuries;--and which they tread still--and will tread perhaps for years
to come before the real enfranchisement of mankind begins.

"I do not mean to write bitterly, dear; but, somehow, all this seems to
bear significantly, ominously, upon my situation in the world.

"When I first knew you I felt so young, so confident, so free, so
scornful of custom, so wholesomely emancipated from silly and unjust
conventions, that perhaps I overestimated my own vigour and ability to
go my way, unvexed, unfettered in this man's world, and let the world
make its own journey in peace. But it will not.

"Twice, now, within a month,--and not through any conscious fault of
mine--this man's world has shown its teeth at me; I have been menaced by
its innate scorn of woman, and have, by chance, escaped a publicity
which would have damned me so utterly that I would not have cared to
live.

"And dear, for the first time I really begin to understand now what the
shelter of a family means; what it is to have law on my side,--and a man
who understands his man's world well enough to fight it with its own
weapons;--well enough to protect a woman from things she never dreamed
might menace her.

"When that policeman came into my room,--dear, you will think me a
perfect coward--but suddenly I seemed to realise what law meant, and
that it had power to protect me or destroy me.... And I was
frightened,--and the table lay there with the fragments of broken
china--and there was that dreadful window--and I--I who knew how he
died!--Louis! Louis! guiltless as I was,--blameless in thought and
deed--I died a thousand deaths there while the big policeman and the
reporters were questioning me.

"If it had not been for what Jose was generous enough to say, I could
never have thought out a lie to tell them; I should have told them how
it had really happened.... And what the papers would have printed about
him and about me, God only knows.

"Never, never had I needed you as I needed you at that moment.... Well;
I lied to them, somehow; I said to them what Jose had said--that he was
seated on the window-ledge, lost his balance, clutched at the table,
overturned it, and fell. And they believed me.... It