'More than any other girl I know—if I keep her from you, that gentle, inflexible creature could rouse in men the old half-superstitious fear——'
'Fear! Are you mad?'
'Mad!' she echoed. 'Unsexed'—those are the words to-day. In the Middle Ages men cried out 'Witch!' and burnt her—the woman who served no man's bed or board.
'You want to make the poor child believe——'
'She sees for herself we've come to a place where we find there's a value in women apart from the value men see in them. You teach us not to look to you for some of the things we need most. If women must be freed by women, we have need of such as——' Her eyes went to the door that Stonor still had an air of guarding. 'Who knows—she may be the new Joan of Arc.'
He paused, and for that moment he [seemed] as bankrupt in denunciation as he was in hope. This personal application of the new heresy found him merely aghast, with no words but 'That she should be the sacrifice!'
'You have taught us to look very calmly on the sacrifice of women,' was the ruthless answer. 'Men tell us in every tongue, it's "a necessary evil."'
He stood still a moment, staring at the ground.
'One girl's happiness—against a thing nobler than happiness for thousands—who can hesitate? Not Jean.'
'Good God! can't you see that this crazed campaign you'd start her on—even if it's successful, it can only be so through the help of men? What excuse shall you make your own soul for not going straight to the goal?'