And then the Woman, thus taught by her lords, has begun to retort
in these latter days by endeavoring to enslave the Man in return.
Unable to conceive the bare idea of freedom for both sexes alike,
she seeks equality in an equal slavery. That she will never
achieve. The future is to the free. We have transcended serfdom.
Women shall henceforth be the equals of men, not by levelling down,
but by levelling up; not by fettering the man, but by elevating,
emancipating, unshackling the woman.
All this Herminia knew well. All these things she turned over in
her mind by herself on the evening of the day when Harvey Kynaston
came to tell her of his approaching marriage. Why, then, did she
feel it to some extent a disappointment? Why so flat at his
happiness? Partly, she said to herself, because it is difficult to
live down in a single generation the jealousies and distrusts
engendered in our hearts by so many ages of harem life. But more
still, she honestly believed, because it is hard to be a free soul
in an enslaved community. No unit can wholly sever itself from the
social organism of which it is a corpuscle. If all the world were
like herself, her lot would have been different. Affection would
have been free; her yearnings for sympathy would have been filled
to the full by Harvey Kynaston or some other. As it was, she had
but that one little fraction of a man friend to solace her; to
resign him altogether to another woman, leaving herself bankrupt of
love, was indeed a bitter trial to her.
Yet for her principles' sake and Dolly's, she never let Harvey
Kynaston or his wife suspect it; as long as she lived, she was a
true and earnest friend at all times to both of them.