acrifice."

"Oh, self-sacrifice in a woman, is always her easiest course. It is the
nearest approach to luxury that society allows her," cried Hadria,
irascibly.

"It is most refreshing to hear you exaggerate, once more, with the old
vigour," her sister cried.

"If I have a foible, it is under-statement," returned Hadria, with a
half-smile.

"Then I think you haven't a foible," said Algitha.

"That I am ready to admit; but seriously, women seem bent on proving
that you may treat them as you like, but they will 'never desert Mr.
Micawber.'"

Algitha smiled.

"They are so mortally afraid of getting off the line and doing what
might not be quite right. They take such a morbid interest in their own
characters. They are so particular about their souls. The female soul is
such a delicate creation--like a bonnet. Look at a woman trimming and
poking at her bonnet--that's exactly how she goes on with her soul."

Algitha laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

"It has trained her in a sort of heroism, at any rate," she said.

"Heroism! talk of Spartan boys, they are not in it! A woman will endure
martyrdom with the expression of a seraph,--an extremely aggravating
seraph. She looks after her soul as if it were the ultimate fact of the
universe. She will trim and preen that ridiculous soul, though the
heavens fall and the rest of her sex perish."

"Come now, I think there are exceptions."

"A few, but very few. It is a point of honour, a sacred canon. Women
will go on patiently drawing water in sieves, and pretend they are
usefully employed because it tires them!"

"They believe it," said Algitha.

"Perhaps so. But it's very silly."

"It is really well meant. It is a submission to the supposed will of
heaven."

"A poor compliment to Heaven!" Hadria exclaimed.

"Well, it is not, of course, your conception nor mine of the will of
heaven, but it is their's."

Hadria shrugged her shoulders. "I wish women would think a little less
of Heaven in the abstract, and a little more of one another, in the
concrete."

"Nobody has ever taught them to think of one another; on the contrary,
they have always been trained to think of men, and of Heaven, and their
souls. That training accounts for their attitude towards their own sex."

"I suppose so. A spirit of sisterhood among women would have sadly upset
the social scheme, as it has been hitherto conceived. Indeed the social
scheme has made such a spirit well-nigh impossib