was the simple question that Verena desired to propound, and Basil
smiled across the room at her with an amused tenderness as he gathered
that she conceived it to be a poser. He didn't think it would frighten
him much if she were to ask him that, and he would sit down with her for
as many minutes as she liked.

He, of course, was one of the systematic scoffers, one of those to whom
she said--"Do you know how you strike me? You strike me as men who are
starving to death while they have a cupboard at home, all full of bread
and meat and wine; or as blind, demented beings who let themselves be
cast into a debtor's prison, while in their pocket they have the key of
vaults and treasure-chests heaped up with gold and silver. The meat and
wine, the gold and silver," Verena went on, "are simply the suppressed
and wasted force, the precious sovereign remedy, of which society
insanely deprives itself--the genius, the intelligence, the inspiration
of women. It is dying, inch by inch, in the midst of old superstitions
which it invokes in vain, and yet it has the elixir of life in its
hands. Let it drink but a draught, and it will bloom once more; it will
be refreshed, radiant; it will find its youth again. The heart, the
heart is cold, and nothing but the touch of woman can warm it, make it
act. We _are_ the Heart of humanity, and let us have the courage to
insist on it! The public life of the world will move in the same barren,
mechanical, vicious circle--the circle of egotism, cruelty, ferocity,
jealousy, greed, of blind striving to do things only for _some_, at the
cost of others, instead of trying to do everything for all. All, all?
Who dares to say 'all' when we are not there? We are an equal, a
splendid, an inestimable part. Try us and you'll see--you will wonder
how, without us, society has ever dragged itself even this distance--so
wretchedly small compared with what it might have been--on its painful
earthly pilgrimage. That is what I should like above all to pour into
the ears of those who still hold out, who stiffen their necks and repeat
hard, empty formulas, which are as dry as a broken gourd that has been
flung away in the desert. I would take them by their selfishness, their
indolence, their interest. I am not here to recriminate, nor to deepen
the gulf that already yawns between the sexes, and I don't accept the
doctrine that they are natural enemies, since my plea is for a union far
more intimate--provided it be equ