I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman’s taking the social stand which some of them,—­poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only dream of such things because they have missed woman’s peculiar happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor woman!—­if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these petticoated monstrosities have in view, I would call upon my own sex to use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty, to scourge them back within their proper bounds!  But it will not be needful.  The heart of time womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!”

Never was mortal blessed—­if blessing it were—­with a glance of such entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its completeness, as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth.  She seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood over it in perfect content.  The very woman whom he pictured—­the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more powerful existence—­sat there at his feet.

I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent—­as I felt, by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought this outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine egotism.  It centred everything in itself, and deprived woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere incident in the great sum of man.  Hollingsworth had boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt.  Without intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these troubled waters.  Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the champion of her sex.

But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled.  Some tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger.

“Well, be it so,” was all she said.  “I, at least, have deep cause to think you right.  Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only too ready to become to him what you say!”

I smiled—­somewhat bitterly, it is true—­in contemplation of my own ill-luck.  How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet!

“Women almost invariably behave thus,” thought I.  “What does the fact mean?  Is it their nature?  Or is it, at last, the result of ages of compelled degradation?  And, in either case, will it be possible ever to redeem them?”