l--I mean about all these
questions--you know what I mean. The bold striving spirits do air their
views a little, and always in a way that makes one realize how badly
they need airing--but most of the nicer women are very chary of talk,
they have to be drawn out, a hint of opposition makes them start back or
prevaricate, and I see them afterwards with their husbands, pretty
silken furry feathery jewelled _silences_. All their suppression doesn't
keep them orthodox, it only makes them furtive and crumpled and creased
in their minds--in just the way that things get crumpled and creased if
they are always being shoved back into a drawer. You have only to rout
about in their minds for a bit. They pretend at first to be quite
correct, and then out comes the nasty little courage of the darkness.
Sometimes there is even an apologetic titter. They are quite
emancipated, they say; I have misunderstood them. Their emancipation is
like those horrid white lizards that grow in the Kentucky caves out of
the sunlight. They tell you they don't see why they shouldn't do this or
that--mean things, underhand things, cheap, vicious, sensual things....
Are there, I wonder, the same dreadful little caverns in men? I doubt
it. And then comes a situation that really tries their quality.... Think
of the quandary I got into with you, Stephen. And for my sex I'm rather
a daring person. The way in which I went so far--and then ran away. I
had a kind of excuse--in my illness. That illness! Such a queer untimely
feminine illness....

"We're all to pieces, Stephen. That's what brought down Rome. The women
went to pieces then, and the women are going to pieces to-day. What's
the good of having your legions in the Grampians and marching up to
Philae, while the wives are talking treason in your houses? It's no good
telling us to go back to the Ancient Virtues. The Ancient Virtues
haven't _kept_. The Ancient Virtues in an advanced state of decay is
what was the matter with Rome and what is the matter with us. You can't
tell a woman to go back to the spinning-wheel and the kitchen and the
cradle, when you have power-looms, French cooks, hotels, restaurants and
modern nurseries. We've overflowed. We've got to go on to a lot of New
Virtues. And in all the prospect before me--I can't descry one clear
simple thing to do....

"But I'm running on. I want to know, Stephen, why you've got nothing to
say about all this. It must have been staring you in the face e