an thought and action is 'nerves.'"

"But yours is a special case of nerves," Celia pursued, with gentle
imperturbability. "I think I can make my meaning clear to you--though
the parallel isn't precisely an elegant one. The finest thoroughbred
dog in the world, if it is beaten viciously and cowed in its youth, will
always have a latent taint of nervousness, apprehension, timidity--call
it what you like. Well, it seems to me there's something like that in
your case, Edith. They hurt you too cruelly, poor girl. I won't say
it broke your nerve--but it made a flaw in it. Just as a soldier's old
wound aches when there's a storm in the air--so your old hurt distracts
and upsets you under certain psychological conditions. It's a rather
clumsy explanation, but I think it does explain."

"Perhaps--I don't know," Edith replied, in a tone of melancholy reverie.
"It makes a very poor creature out of me, whatever it is."

"I rather lose patience, Edith," her companion admonished her, gravely.
"Nobody has a right to be so deficient in courage as you allow yourself
to be."

"But I'm not a coward," the other protested. "I could be as brave as
anybody--as brave as you are--if a chance were given me. But of what use
is bravery against a wall twenty feet high? I can't get over it. I only
wound and cripple myself by trying to tear it down, or break through
it.--Oh yes, I know what you say! You say there is no wall--that it is
all an illusion of mine. But unfortunately I'm unable to take that view.
I've battered myself against it too long--too sorely, Celia!"

Celia shrugged her shoulders in comment. "Oh, we women all have our
walls--our limitations--if it comes to that," she said, with a kind
of compassionate impatience in her tone. "We are all ridiculous
together--from the point of view of human liberty. The free woman is a
fraud--a myth. She is as empty an abstraction as the 'Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity' that the French put on their public buildings. I used to
have the most wonderful visions of what independence would mean. I
thought that when I was absolutely my own master, with my money and my
courage and my free mind, I would do things to astonish all mankind. But
really the most I achieve is the occasional mild surprise of a
German waiter. Even that palls on one after a time. And if you were
independent, Edith--if you had any amount of money--what difference do
you think it would make to you? What could you do that you don't do