He lifted his hand to his forehead as if suddenly he was dazed, sunken into the dream of years. His knees bent, he would have fallen. Selah sprang swiftly forward, placed his arm over her shoulder, and supported him. He sank slowly into the chair she had just vacated. She made sure swiftly from long experience that he had only reached the coma of a familiar state. Then she went back to the front of the stage and began to speak.
The Colonel looked up vaguely, saw her standing there as one remembers a vision in a dream.
"That's it, Selah, my love! Give 'em 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,'" he murmured, as his head sank upon his breast.
"You have listened to the brave speech of a brave gentleman, my friends," she began, "and I would not if I could subtract one lovely word from that lovely tribute to the men and women and order to which he belongs. What he has said is the truth, raised to the eloquence of a martial soul. Until the present time we women, as he told you, have figured chiefly in religion, poetry, and romance. We have been that part of the imaginations of men which creates creeds, poetry, windmills, and fiction. We have no reputation for any other form of existence. We have been purely imaginary beings living in physical bodies for just men. Our character is a legend invented by men; it could never fit a real human being. Yet we have accepted it, and tried to believe in it. You have indeed kept us, but we have not lived at all except for you. We are not the authors of a single standard governing our lives. Do you understand what that means, you men who live only according to your own will and purpose?"
They listened to her in silence. They studied her in amazement. But we do not applaud an accusing angel, and they did not applaud Selah, who stood so elegantly fair and tall, a slim figure with earnest dark eyes bent in passionate appeal upon their faces.
"It was men," she went on, "who divided women into three great classes—virgins, wives, and prostitutes, a purely physical classification. You commanded chastity. We have never had the right to choose it. Women have never been real parents. They are only the mothers of the children of men. The small, almost negligible influence they have over their sons proves that. After the years of childhood are passed sons sustain only a sentimental relation to their mothers. They are inspired by them merely as religion or poetry inspires. Your institutions, social, moral, economic, and political, do not represent us nor our needs. But they represent you men.
"Every civilization is a bachelor civilization, with good or bad provision in it for the protection of women. But we do live, and like other sentient beings we desire to express ourselves in life, not merely in poetry. Listen, men," she said, bending sweetly forward like a lily in the golden gloom. "After they had knowledge, the first pair, man and woman, went out of the garden together! But you, with your beautiful but mistaken chivalry, have gone out and left us in the garden, the helpless, kept women of your love and desires. We wish to come out, to be with you. We must come! Once we have tasted knowledge, once we know what better things we are for, we must follow you to the ends of the earth. This everlasting garden where you keep us is no place for a thoughtful person. It is too limited by innocence and idleness. We are no longer innocent, we know the same things you know; we have the same education, the same thoughts, the same aspirations. Disobedience is not always a sin. When the first man and woman tasted of the fruit of knowledge, they simply assumed a terrific responsibility. But they assumed it together! You are withholding from us this right to live by your side. We are doing too much, or nothing at all. And you are not sharing justly with us. We are losing our old places in your hearts. After all, this is not the golden age of poetry and knights. The very pedestal upon which we once stood in your regard has been overturned by realities. We have ceased to be your ideals dearly cherished. It is not our fault nor yours. No one is to blame. This movement of women is as natural as any other growth. We are migrating out of the legendary into the real; we are passing from sentiment and romance into history. And we have arrived! Nothing can stop us. You only shame yourselves, your manhood, and your honour if you oppose us. We must succeed because we are right!"
She turned suddenly, and went back into the wings.
"What'd she say?" asked a man in a hoarse whisper. "Gol dern if I know! Foreign language to me!"
"The volypuke of the Woman's Movement! Didn't understand one word she said!"