"Yes, I repeat it—with a pride in my own sacrifice that was false and bad—for it gave me strength to do a thing that was wrong! What is heroic in one is vanity in another. And I thank you for that expression of disapproval that reminds me to distinguish those to whom it is an ugly hypocrisy. There are women—and may their names be blessed—who, before their hearts have been kindled by love, bear within them a capacity for sacrifice and a longing for maternity which makes of them fitting subjects for the Demetrian mission; but when a woman has once harbored the young God Eros, when she has by implication, if not by express promise, sanctioned the harboring of him in another, then the strength that can disown her love and break that promise is drawn from a vanity that is foolish, or a conceit that is contemptible; and as I look back to the day when, after weeks of weakening struggle, I arose from the bed of torment strangely endowed with a strength that enabled me to make unmoved my final vows, I see that my strength came not from Demeter but from self-righteousness and self-conceit. And I make this bitter confession before you all that the fault may rest where it should, not upon you, priests and priestesses of Demeter"—and here she looked up at the gallery where they sat—"not upon him"—and she turned almost imperceptibly to Chairo—"but upon me."
Her voice sank as she said these words, and there broke from many of us a murmur of sympathy.
"But these things," she continued in a louder voice, "are of little importance by the side of what I have yet to say. Pardon me, if I have had to speak of myself; it is not often—and, indeed, it is distressful that so private a thing as this should become matter of public concern. But you have to decide an issue in which the conduct of one least worthy of your attention has become set up, as it were, before you as the conduct of all my sex. It is not I that am judged, but all who are unworthy of the mission—or shall I not rather say—unfitted for it. For though I am willing—nay, desire—to accept my full share of blame, yet am I not willing that my sex shall in my person be judged less worthy than it is. Believe me, that noble as is the mission of Demeter, noble also is the love of a woman for a man, and though I bow my head as I confess my unfitness for the one, in vindication of the other I hold my head erect."
She straightened herself at these words, and her stature helped to give to this vindication both dignity and strength. There was something splendid in the gesture, the emphasis, and the inflection with which these words were said. For the first time Lydia's speech was here interrupted by applause; it began far away from her and was soon caught up by others, it swelled through the building, and feelings long pent up in hushed attention to her now found relief in an expression of triumphant approval; a few in their excitement rose to their feet, then more, till all, except Chairo, who remained resolutely seated, stood wildly gesticulating their admiration for the girl who had the courage to face them in vindication of a love upon which some had wished to throw disgrace, but which now she held up to universal honor.
The applause lasted several minutes; if it died away in one corner it was vociferously renewed in another, and when at last, out of very weariness, it came to an end, Lydia resumed:
"But all I have said is but a preface to what I have still to say: I have spoken to you of myself, but what shall I say to you of Chairo? I have told you of a duty I felt to him, but to every duty is there not a corresponding right? And if Chairo had rights does he not stand, too, for the rights of all his sex?"
Once more the chamber rang with renewed applause, and Chairo for the first time raised his head and looked at Lydia. Now at last she had lifted the subject to a level which eliminated him. He was no longer the issue; she was speaking for all men, for the rights universal of manhood, which the cult had, in his case, ignored and must at last be vindicated.
"I have told you that by implication, if not by express words, Chairo had reason to know I loved him; was he to stand by and see the rights I had given him denied, rights for which he has stood, not for himself alone, but for all men long before his own became involved? He stands charged here with sacrilege and with violence. Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the legislature, so far as I am concerned, he is guilty of neither the one nor the other."
A deep murmur passed through the chamber as Lydia's voice impressively lowered on these final words.