Could it be possible that human persons were subject to the spells of persons with tastes, aims, practices, pursuits alien to theirs?  It was a riddle taxing her to solve it for the resistance to a monstrous iniquity of injustice, degrading her conception of our humanity.  She attacked it in the abstract, as a volunteer champion of our offended race.  And Oh! it could not be.  The battle was won without a blow.

Thereupon came glimpses of the gulfs of bondage, delicious, rose-enfolded, foreign; they were chapters of soft romance, appearing interminable, an endless mystery, an insatiable thirst for the mystery.  She heard crashes of the opera-melody, and despising it even more than the wretched engine of the harshness, she was led by it, tyrannically led a captive, like the organ-monkey, until perforce she usurped the note, sounded the cloying tune through her frame, passed into the vulgar sugariness, lost herself.

And saying to herself:  This is what moves them! she was moved.  One thrill of appreciation drew her on the tide, and once drawn from shore she became submerged.  Why am I not beautiful, was her thought.  Those voluptuous modulations of melting airs are the natural clothing of beautiful women.  Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved.  They are privileged to believe, they are born with the faith.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

A whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret
Ah! we’re in the enemy’s country now
Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved
Could peruse platitudes upon that theme with enthusiasm
Foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea
Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs
He was not alive for his own pleasure
Hug the hatred they packed up among their bundles
I baint done yet
Irishmen will never be quite sincere
Loudness of the interrogation precluded thought of an answer
Love the children of Erin, when not fretted by them
Loves his poets, can almost understand what poetry means
May lull themselves with their wakefulness
Never forget that old Ireland is weeping
Not every chapter can be sunshine
Not likely to be far behind curates in besieging an heiress
Not the great creatures we assume ourselves to be
Nursing of a military invalid awakens tenderer anxieties
Paying compliments and spoiling a game! 
Secret of the art was his meaning what he said
Suggestion of possible danger might more dangerous than silence
Tears of men sink plummet-deep
Tears of such a man have more of blood than of water in them
They laugh, but they laugh extinguishingly
Time, whose trick is to turn corners of unanticipated sharpness
Twisted by a nature that would not allow of open eyes
With death; we’d rather not, because of a qualm
Woman’s precious word No at the sentinel’s post, and alert
Would like to feel he was doing a bit of good