In Elizabeth's room, with her books, with the Psyche and the Botticelli Judith and the Mona Lisa and the drawing of the Sphinx, they talked of twenty things, finally of the Settlement's specific activities, old ones carried on, new ones embarked in; then, "But more and more you get drawn—or I get drawn—into the ocean of China Awake."
"China Awake?"
"Women Awake. It's an ocean all right, with an ocean's possibilities."
"I don't think it's women only who are waking, Marie. Women and men, all of us—"
"I agree," said Marie. "But it wasn't just natural sleepy-headedness with women. They've been drugged—given knock-out drops, so to speak. They have a long way to wake up."
Hagar mused, her eyes upon the drawing. "Yes, a good, long way.... There must have been a lot of pristine strength."
"Well, it's coming out. All kinds of things are coming out with an accent on qualities they didn't think she had."
"Yes. The world is rather in the position of the hen with the duckling—"
"The kind of thing we read and hear at this place emphasizes, of course, the economic and sociological side. It's to be the Century of Fair Distribution, of Social Organization, of Humanism—ergo, Woman Also. Which, of course, is all right, but I'd put an infinite plus to that."
"And Elizabeth?"