“It has trained her in a sort of heroism, at any rate,” she said.
“Heroism! talk of Spartan boys, they are not in it! A woman will endure martyrdom with the expression of a seraph,—an extremely aggravating seraph. She looks after her soul as if it were the ultimate fact of the universe. She will trim and preen that ridiculous soul, though the heavens fall and the rest of her sex perish.”
“Come now, I think there are exceptions.”
“A few, but very few. It is a point of honour, a sacred canon. Women will go on patiently drawing water in sieves, and pretend they are usefully employed because it tires them!”
“They believe it,” said Algitha.
“Perhaps so. But it’s very silly.”
“It is really well meant. It is a submission to the supposed will of heaven.”
“A poor compliment to Heaven!” Hadria exclaimed.
“Well, it is not, of course, your conception nor mine of the will of heaven, but it is their’s.”
Hadria shrugged her shoulders. “I wish women would think a little less of Heaven in the abstract, and a little more of one another, in the concrete.”