The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Conflict, by David Graham Phillips

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Title: The Conflict

Author: David Graham Phillips

Posting Date: September 27, 2008 [EBook #433]
Release Date: February, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CONFLICT

by

David Graham Phillips

I

Four years at Wellesley; two years about equally divided among Paris,
Dresden and Florence. And now Jane Hastings was at home again. At
home in the unchanged house--spacious, old-fashioned--looking down from
its steeply sloping lawns and terraced gardens upon the sooty, smoky
activities of Remsen City, looking out upon a charming panorama of
hills and valleys in the heart of South Central Indiana. Six years of
striving in the East and abroad to satisfy the restless energy she
inherited from her father; and here she was, as restless as ever--yet
with everything done that a woman could do in the way of an active
career. She looked back upon her years of elaborate preparation; she
looked forward upon--nothing. That is, nothing but marriage--dropping
her name, dropping her personality, disappearing in the personality of
another. She had never seen a man for whom she would make such a
sacrifice; she did not believe that such a man existed.

She meditated bitterly upon that cruel arrangement of Nature's whereby
the father transmits his vigorous qualities in twofold measure to the
daughter, not in order that she may be a somebody, but solely in order
that she may transmit them to sons. "I don't believe it," she decided.
"There's something for ME to do." But what? She gazed down at Remsen
City, connected by factories and pierced from east, west and south by
railways. She gazed out over the fields and woods. Yes, there must be
something for her besides merely marrying and breeding--just as much
for her as for a man. But what? If she should marry a man who would
let her rule him, she would despise him. If she should marry a man she
could respect--a man who was of the master class like her father--how
she would hate him f