"No, don't ask me to think!" she interrupted. "All my endeavour is not to think. Let me live on the surface of life, as most women do. I will do nothing but attend to my household duties and the social duties of my position. I will read nothing that is not first weeded by you of every painful thought that might remind me. I will play with my baby by day, and curl up comfortably beside you at night, infinitely grateful and content to be so happily circumstanced myself—Don, help me to that kind of life, will you? And burn the books. Let me deserve my name and be 'well pleasing one' to you first of all the world, and then to any with whom I may come in contact. Let me live while you live, and die when you die. But do not ask me to think. I can be the most docile, the most obedient, the most loving of women as long as I forget my knowledge of life; but the moment I remember I become a raging fury; I have no patience with slow processes; 'Revolution' would be my cry, and I could preside with an awful joy at the execution of those who are making the misery now for succeeding generations."
"But, my dear child, it would surely be happier for you to try to alleviate—"
"No, no," she again interrupted. "I know all you can say on that score; but I cannot bear to be brought into contact with certain forms of suffering. I cannot bear the contradictions of life; they make me rage."
"What I want to say is that you should act, and not think," I ventured.
"How can I act without thinking?" she asked.
"You see, if you don't act you must think," I pursued; "and if you do think without acting, you become morbid. The conditions of an educated woman's life now force her to know the world. She is too intelligent not to reason about what she knows. She sees what is wrong; and if she is high-minded she feels forced to use her influence to combat it. If she resists the impulse her conscience cannot acquit her, and she suffers herself for her cowardice."
"I know," she answered. "But don't let us discuss the subject any more."
We were silent for some time after that, and then I made a move as if to speak, but checked myself.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I was going to ask you to do something to oblige me; but now I do not like to."