“And as I needed blindness in some directions, in others I needed clear sight.
“I needed some one to see that my woman’s heart was not only the heart of a happy mother, to whom God had given an almost perfect child, but also the heart of a lover—not of a grande amoureuse, perhaps, but of a lover who had been deprived of the love that is the complement of woman’s, and who suffered perpetually in woman’s peculiar and terrible way because of that deprivation.
“I needed an understanding of my sacred hunger, a comprehension of my desolation, a realization that my efforts to fill my time with work were as the efforts of a traveller in a forest to escape from the wolves whose voices he hears behind him. I needed the recognition of a simple truth—that the thing one is passionately eager to give is nearly always the thing one is passionately eager to receive, and that when I poured forth sympathy upon others I was longing to have it poured forth upon me. I gave because secretly I realized the hunger I was sharing. And often, having satisfied your hunger, I was left to starve, no longer in company, but entirely alone.
“I needed great things, perhaps, but I needed them expressed in little ways; and I needed little cares, little attentions, little thoughtfulnesses, little preventions, little, little, absurd kindnesses, tendernesses, recognitions, forgivenesses. Perhaps, indeed, even more than anything magnificent or great, I needed the so-called little things. It is not enough for a woman to know that a man would do for her something important, something even superb, if the occasion for it arose. Such an occasion probably never would arise—and she cannot wait. She wants to be shown at every moment that some one is thinking kindly of her, is making little, kind plots and plans for her, is wishing to ward off from her the chill winds, to keep from pricking her the thorns of the roses, to shut out from her the shadows of life and let in the sunbeams to her pathway.
“I needed the tender, passing touch to show me my secret grief was understood, and my inconsistency was pardoned. I needed the generous smile to prove to me that my greed for kindness, even when perhaps inopportune, was met in an ungrudging spirit. I needed now and then—I needed this sometimes terribly, more, perhaps, than any other thing—a sacrifice of some very small, very personal desire of yours, because it was not mine or because it was opposite to mine. Never, never, did my heart and my nature demand of yours any great sacrifice of self, such as mine could have made—such as mine once did make—for you. But it did demand, often—often it demanded some small sacrifice: the giving up of some trifle, the resignation of some advantage, perhaps, that your man’s intellect gave you over my woman’s intellect, the abandoning of some argumentative position, or the not taking of it, the sweet pretence—scarcely a sin against the Holy Ghost of truth!—that I was a tiny bit more persuasive, or more clear-sighted, or more happy in some contention, or more just in some decision, than perhaps I really was. I needed to be shown your affection for me, as I was ever ready, ever anxious, to show mine for you, in all the little ways that are the language of the heart and that fill a woman’s life with music.
“All this I needed. My nature cried out for it as instinctively as the nature of man cries out for God. But all this I needed generally in vain. You were not always a niggard. You were ready sometimes to give in your way. But were you ever ready to give in mine when you saw—and sometimes you must have seen, sometimes you did see—what mine was? I longed always to give you all you wanted in the way you wanted it. But you gave when you wished and as you chose to give. I was often grateful. I was too often grateful. I was unduly grateful. Because I was giving, I was always giving far more than I received.
“But all that time I had something. All that time I had a memory that I counted sacred. All that time, like an idiot child, I was clasping in my hand a farthing, which I believed, which I stated, to be a shining piece of gold.
“You knew what it was. You knew it was a farthing! You knew—you knew!
“And now that the hour has come when I know, too, can’t you understand that I realize not only that that farthing is a farthing, but that all farthings are farthings? Can’t you understand that I hate those who have given me farthings when my hands were stretched out for gold—my hands that were giving gold?
“Can’t you understand? Can’t you? Then I’ll make you understand! I’ll make you! I’ll make you!”