! The topmost height of your profession, or business, of whatever
career you are in."

"You are ambitious," he said.

"Not for myself," she answered quickly. "I have no ambition for myself."

"But perhaps the ambition to spur on another successfully? That seems to
me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship
in their hearts."

Suddenly tears started into her eyes. She was sitting opposite Malling,
the tea-table between them. Now she leaned forward across it. By nature
she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-conscious, woman. She was
not self-conscious now.

"It is much better to be selfish," she said earnestly. "That is where we
women make such a fatal mistake. Instead of trusting to ourselves, of
relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always
another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it
is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition. And then, when all founders,
we realize too late what I dare say every man knows."

"What is that?"

"That we women are fools--fools!"

"For being unselfish?"

"For thinking we have power when we are impotent."

She made a gesture that was surely one of despair.

"No one--at any rate, no woman--has power for another," she added, with
almost terrible conviction. "That is all a legend, made up to please us,
I suppose. We draw a sword against darkness and think we are fighting.
Isn't it too absurd?"

With the last words she changed her tone, trying to make it light, and
she smiled.

"We take everything too seriously. That's the trouble!" she said. "And
men pretend we take nothing seriously."

"Very often they don't understand."

"Oh, please say never!" she exclaimed. "They never understand."

Suddenly Malling resolved on a very bold stroke.

"But I'm a man," he said, as if that obvious fact shattered her
contention.

"What has that got to do with it?" she said, in obvious surprise.

"Because I do not understand."

For a moment she was silent. He thought he read what was passing through
her mind, as he knew he had read her character. She was one of those
women who must be proud of their men, who love to be ruled, but only
by a conqueror, who delight to sink themselves, but in power, not in
impotence. And now she was confronted by the shipwreck not merely of
her hopes, but also of her belief. She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy
of the waves that, perhaps, would soon engulf it. But she