springs from
that. I hope with all my soul that you won't marry; but if you don't it
must not be because you have promised me. You know what I think--that
there is something noble done when one makes a sacrifice for a great
good. Priests--when they were real priests--never married, and what you
and I dream of doing demands of us a kind of priesthood. It seems to me
very poor, when friendship and faith and charity and the most
interesting occupation in the world--when such a combination as this
doesn't seem, by itself, enough to live for. No man that I have ever
seen cares a straw in his heart for what we are trying to accomplish.
They hate it; they scorn it; they will try to stamp it out whenever they
can. Oh yes, I know there are men who pretend to care for it; but they
are not really men, and I wouldn't be sure even of them! Any man that
one would look at--with him, as a matter of course, it is war upon us to
the knife. I don't mean to say there are not some male beings who are
willing to patronise us a little; to pat us on the back and recommend a
few moderate concessions; to say that there _are_ two or three little
points in which society has not been quite just to us. But any man who
pretends to accept our programme _in toto_, as you and I understand it,
of his own free will, before he is forced to--such a person simply
schemes to betray us. There are gentlemen in plenty who would be glad to
stop your mouth by kissing you! If you become dangerous some day to
their selfishness, to their vested interests, to their immorality--as I
pray heaven every day, my dear friend, that you may!--it will be a grand
thing for one of them if he can persuade you that he loves you. Then you
will see what he will do with you, and how far his love will take him!
It would be a sad day for you and for me and for all of us if you were
to believe something of that kind. You see I am very calm now; I have
thought it all out."

Verena had listened with earnest eyes. "Why, Olive, you are quite a
speaker yourself!" she exclaimed. "You would far surpass me if you would
let yourself go."

Miss Chancellor shook her head with a melancholy that was not devoid of
sweetness. "I can speak to _you_; but that is no proof. The very stones
of the street--all the dumb things of nature--might find a voice to talk
to you. I have no facility; I am awkward and embarrassed and dry." When
this young lady, after a struggle with the winds and waves of emotion,
e