t I crossed the room and spoke to my hostess. She greeted
me graciously, and then some one else came up, and I stood aside.
Suddenly the sense of eyes upon me came over me. How those women
stared! Never before had I been among women and felt no bond of
sisterhood. How was it? was I unsexed, or they? There seemed a gulf
between us: I read it in their eyes, it came to me in the air, a
subtle but keen conviction. And how exquisite they were!--so soft and
smooth and white, with no lines on their foreheads or creases round
their mouths. I had never had such a sense of beauty given me before
by anything but pictures. I wondered the men did not kneel to them: I
felt as if I could myself if they would let me. As I stood there, my
heart beating quick, and something in my throat beginning to choke me,
dazzled and bewildered by the scene, a voice said--oh how gently!--in
my ear, "Miss Linton, will you let me take you into the other rooms?
There are one or two pictures you will enjoy." I tried not to start,
but I trembled in spite of myself, the relief was so great. There we
stood--he, Henry Lawrence, taller and handsomer and prouder-looking
than any man in the room, looking down upon me and offering me his
arm! I think I felt as I should if a lifeboat came to take me off a
wreck--in a modified degree, I mean. I took his arm with a few rather
inarticulate words of thanks, and we strolled through the other rooms,
he listening to me with such earnest attentiveness, bending his head
at every word, seeming so absorbed in me, so forgetful of the women
who gazed at me as if I were a pariah, and the men who smiled on them
as they did so. I confess it, I felt as if he stood between me and
the mocking, coldly scrutinizing glances about me. I felt guarded,
protected, and I could not struggle against the feeling, weak though
I knew it was: it seemed irresistible. I suppose, being a woman like
other women, I inherit traditional weakness, and cannot break the
bonds of former generations in a day. Be it as it may, he did not seem
to know or notice that I was not myself: he only seemed interested and
absorbed. I did not feel as if I were taxing his courtesy, and soon
I recovered my self-possession and talked naturally: my spirits rose,
and my natural self-assertion returned to me. I enjoyed looking at the
women, watching their ways and listening to the sound of their voices.
It was a revelation of a new world to me, and I said as much to him.

"W