who flaunts her raddle and her broken feather in
the slums of London, the same story is told and the same moral preached.
Where is an equal army of men to be found to invite the contumely of
their own sex? A woman's virtue is her continence, and a man's virtues
are truthfulness and courage. There is an unspeakably great army of
the one sex which makes a show and a lure of its penal uniform. Find me
anywhere a band of men who flaunt themselves in an equal denial of the
virtues proper to man, who parade themselves as cowards and liars, and
strive to make a living by the parade of their own desertion from the
manly principle. The tender sensibility of the generic woman is a fraud,
and I should know that better than most men, because I so long believed
in it and had so many rude awakenings from faith. But, oh I now and
again--happy the man who learns it early!--there is a woman to be found
so strong and delicate, so tender yet courageous, so much beyond the
best that men ever find in men, that there is nothing for us but to
abase our souls in gratitude and worship and wonder. We--we have genius
of a hundred sorts, and still genius is rare; we invent, we construct,
we drag new sciences, patient fact by fact, from the regions of
darkness; we think great thoughts and speak great words--there is no
limit set to the passion of our intellectual greed, no limit to the
conquering march of eternal achievement; and when all is said and done
there never lived a woman who had true genius for anything but love and
goodness. There in that glorious small specialized field they shine, and
they shine the brighter and more splendid because of their contrast
with a sordid, heartless, stupid, and greedy sex. And there,' he said,
kneeling to stir the slumbering embers of his camp-fire--'there, shining
in that little shining field, are you, Madge, brightest amongst the
brightest and saddest among the saddest, and here am I who wrecked your
life for you with such admirable good intent'

The rage flamed out. He took his seat upon his camp-stool, and shredded
tobacco for his pipe, staring with vacant eyes into the smoke-fog which
everywhere imprisoned his gaze, and in a minute he was back at his
dreams again, and the past once more unrolled itself before him.

He was back in Montcourtois, marching the cobbled pavement of the
_place_ in front of the Hotel of the Three Friends, hatless and just
half conscious of the touch of the wintry air on his ch