e for me to
be of no use in the world; and I hoped that I might do something in a
way that seemed natural for women. And I don't give up because I'm
unfit as a woman. I might be a man, and still be impulsive and timid and
nervous, and everything that I thought I was not."

"Yes, you might be all that, and be a man; but you'd be an exceptional
man, and I don't think you're an exceptional woman. If you've failed, it
is n't your temperament that's to blame."

"I think it is. The wrong is somewhere in me individually. I know it
is."

Dr. Mulbridge, walking beside her, with his hands clasped behind him,
threw up his head and laughed. "Well, have it your own way, Miss Breen.
Only I don't agree with you. Why should you wish to spare your sex at
your own expense? But that's the way with some ladies, I've noticed.
They approve of what women attempt because women attempt it, and they
believe the attempt reflects honor on them. It's tremendous to think
what men could accomplish for their sex, if they only hung together as
women do. But they can't. They haven't the generosity."

"I think you don't understand me," said Grace, with a severity that
amused him. "I wished to regard myself, in taking up this profession,
entirely as I believed a man would have regarded himself."

"And were you able to do it?"

"No," she unintentionally replied to this unexpected question.

"Haw, haw, haw!" laughed Dr. Mulbridge at her helpless candor. "And are
you sure that you give it up as a man would?"

"I don't know how you mean," she said, vexed and bewildered.

"Do you do it fairly and squarely because you believe that you're a
failure, or because you partly feel that you have n't been fairly dealt
with?"

"I believe that if Mrs. Maynard had had the same confidence in me that
she would have had in any man I should not have failed. But every
woman physician has a double disadvantage that I hadn't the strength to
overcome,--her own inexperience and the distrust of other women."

"Well, whose fault is that?"

"Not the men's. It is the men alone who give women any chance. They are
kind and generous and liberal-minded. I have no blame for them, and I
have no patience with women who want to treat them as the enemies of
women's advancement. Women can't move a step forwards without their
sufferance and help. Dr. Mulbridge," she cried, "I wish to apologize
for the hasty and silly words I used to you the day I came to ask you to
consult with me