He put this in the form of a question, and Ethel said:
“There is in Reginald ‘a little seed of immortal power, which will save its kind alive.’ Therefore he was especially worth saving. He will help progress toward conditions in which the ARTS OF PEACE will prosper. For this progress is dependent on the intelligibility of the doings of dualized—self-harmonized natures. He will make such things intelligible when he gains equilibrium.
“Bertha, now, is such an one. She has come up out of the scarth of great tribulation, and she has washed her robes white in the life-blood of her own bleeding heart, image as it is of the bleeding heart of the Mother of divine Humanity. She, the outraged, has become pitiful to him who crucified her and put her to open shame—a shame which she will never forget. And,” continued Ethel, after a strange pause, “which I should be sorry to see her forget. For such dealings with woman are not to be permitted nor condoned. Nevertheless, Reginald is worth saving, though he should not be encouraged, Mrs. Mancredo, to suppose Bertha will have anything more to say to him than to—”
“What, Miss Ethel, do you really mean that you women are going to conspire to make all other women leave us men alone in peace?” said Reginald, walking out from his secluded chair in the corner behind the portières, where he had half relapsed into his old fashion of floating away into union with reflective agencies. “Do you mean,” he repeated stumblingly, as he came into their circle, “Do you mean that women are to be taught somehow to leave us men to mind our business? We men are dead tired of women, all of us; but we can’t really get rid of them. We often feel like shrieking out at women: ‘For heaven’s sake, take yourselves out of sight and hearing for a thousand years. Get out of our light, and give us a chance to find ourselves!’
“They take too much out of our self-esteem when they tell the truth; and when they don’t, they take too much out of our esteem for them, which is worse yet, for our comfort. We know there is something wrong about us, but as we don’t quite understand ourselves, of course we can’t make them understand us. The reason I want to shriek out at them is—well—it is queer, but it is because I like them so much.”
Robert laughed out, as if he had a fellow feeling for Reginald in this difficulty.
“Now that sounds queer, but it is the truth, isn’t it, Robert?” he said, with translucent, beautiful orbs raised in integrity. For Reginald was having an amazing good time, telling the truth as he understood it. But then he went on and told other truths so simply and helpfully, that they began to fear he was really getting sick again.
“See that? Now look at that,” he said. “I have been listening to you, to see how much you would bear in the way of real endeavor at truth-tellings. And now, when I speak as plainly as I can, you think my brain is giving way. Now listen to me. If a lot of good men and women don’t speak the truth about this matter of love, a lot of good brains will give way under the contradictory teachings that some sorts of churches are by silence consenting to, while protecting men in debauching woman-power, in marriage and out. Protestant churches never, in my experience of their doings, assist women to establish themselves on their own moral heights; even though these churches know that, standing thus and there, women would lift men up to these heights, and so easily hasten forward man’s truly human development. Besides, such women’s sons would be born right the first time, and have less need of a second birth. Woman could do so much for us if we would only give her a fair chance to work according to her genius.
“You know how it was with Laura?” Nothing could exceed his tenderness and devotion as Reginald uttered this name, once so dear to Petrarch. And then, as if reciting a memorized matter he went on in his distant, ventriloquized voice:
“If that idolized object of Petrarch’s vehement passion had not held to her rectitude (notwithstanding the harsh vicissitudes of her home), that man Petrarch would never have known that that woman’s personal attractions were not her real charm for him. For that they were excelled by her inherent moral glory and her spiritual-percipience.