s through different phases before attaining her perfect state, we
should almost always see her stop at the first and die without even
approaching the second.

It is difficult enough for us merely to conceive that there are other
roads to follow than that laid down for us by chance or by parents too
often shortsighted; and when we make the discovery, our first dreams of
liberty appear so momentous and so dangerous! Is it not just then that
we need time to venture upon the most lawful actions, seeing that we
have no sense of their real proportion?

It is as though a wall separated the life that is forced upon us from
the life which we do not know. Little by little, slowly, by instinct as
much as by volition, we withdraw from the wall and it seems to become
lower. The sky above us becomes vaster, the horizon is disclosed before
our eyes and we at last distinguish what is happening on the other side.
Ah, what sight would compare with that, if it broke suddenly upon our
vision, if we could view life as we view the spreading country beneath
us, when we stand on the summit of a tower! All our senses, being
equally affected, would impart to our will a motive force which is, on
the contrary, dissipated by the tardiness of our feeble comprehension.

Yes, an age comes when our vision is clear and true; but often it is too
late to find a way out of the circle in which we are imprisoned. That is
the secret tragedy of many women's lives.

What would one not give to tell them, those women who tremble and weep,
to lift their minds high enough to see beyond their wretchedness! Let
them develop and strengthen themselves while still under the yoke, in
order to throw it off one day like a gossamer garment which one casts
aside without giving it a thought!...

CHAPTER VI

1

I am happy. Wonderful flowers lie at my feet, flowers which have been
plucked and flung aside: I will pick them all up again, all of them! I
will gather them in my arms and steep myself in their scent! One by one,
I will tend them till they lift their heads again, I will blend them
cunningly; and, when I have bound the fair sheaf, fate may do its worst!

It is no longer a question of the sanity or insanity of my experiment,
or my wisdom or unwisdom. There is a just action to be accomplished;
and, this time, circumstances favour my plans. In her distress, in her
horror of her present life, all the possibilities of deliverance might
have offered themselve