"You have won," he said. "You have won."
"It took you some time to find that out," she remarked, with a trembling voice. "I could have told you that soon after you began. You cried for the destruction of the very things that have made the world progress. You aimed to destroy individuality and you did so—but only with your own class.
"You have preached that all wealth is the result of labor, but now you have realised that intelligent supervision is required to make labor effective, and that brains are just as necessary to the world's prosperity as is manual toil.
"You went out to reform society and level down; and your party no sooner won some power than your women-folk tried to form a "social set" of their own—you don't know women. You are as ignorant of their desires as you are of your own. You do not know it is woman's instinct to be something more than a drab. There is more of the divine spark in the woman than in the man. It should be so with the producers of men. She yearns for uplift, even if it be the sneered-at "society" you sought to crush.
"You have only to note how, when Socialist politicians in any country win any power, their wives crowd each other into those circles of society, that husbands had won notoriety by attacking as "loafing on the workers."
"You have only to note the social columns of the daily press of those countries to see how anxious these wives of Socialist members are to have their names in print that they have had "afternoon-tea" with ladies of any title.
"Deep in the heart of every woman is respect for the title or the decorative side of human life. A flower to her is something more than a thing.
"You women will tell you you do not know them—and how could you?—you, a man who lived the greater part of your life in a monastery apart from your fellows, apart from the problems, apart from the battle against conditions that make men—men. You, in the seclusion of your own kind, conceived dreams of Utopian madness and you came forth and cast your foolish fancies like a net upon the ignorant. And now you find your failings; you see the petty smallness of your ideals and you retreat—back into your abbey like a frightened crab creeping beneath the cover of a stone."
"I know it now," said the crestfallen man. "We can only learn our lessons through bitter experience."
He turned upon his heel as if to leave.