I have pitied you, nevertheless. I have often wished I could give you the vital qualities you lack.
My pity turned to indignation when I heard you express yourself in such unqualified terms of condemnation regarding other women who happened to be unlike you in temperament.
You say there is a certain line which no well-born and womanly woman can pass in thought or feeling or action.
You regard the true women of earth as a higher and rarer order of creation than the best of men, and any woman who by action or word confesses herself to be quite human in her temperament, you feel is, to a certain extent, "unclean and unsexed." You believe the really good women of earth are always on a plane above and beyond the physical. When any woman falls from her pedestal you despise her.
How dare you, madam, sitting in your cold, white chastity, lay down laws of what you consider purity, morality, and cleanliness, for other human souls?
How dare you condemn those who do not reach your standard?
What do you know of life, great, palpitating, throbbing, vital life, terrible and beautiful life, terrible while passing through the valleys of temptation, beautiful upon the heights of self-control?
How dare you assume greater virtue, greater respectability, greater fineness of sentiment, than the tempest-tossed, passion-beaten souls, about you?
What do you know of real virtue, real strength?
You have been poor, you tell me, in worldly riches, and you have been lonely, yet you have never once degraded your womanhood by an "unworthy " impulse. Never known a temptation of the senses. Those things disgusted you.