The heart of time womanhood knows where its own
sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!"
Never was mortal blessed--if blessing it were--with a glance of such
entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its
completeness, as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on
Hollingsworth. She seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into
her heart, and brood over it in perfect content. The very woman whom
he pictured--the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more
powerful existence--sat there at his feet.
I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent--as I
felt, by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought
this outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of
masculine egotism. It centred everything in itself, and deprived
woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to
make it a mere incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had
boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt.
Without intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these
troubled waters. Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the
champion of her sex.
But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled.
Some tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not
anger.
"Well, be it so," was all she said. "I, at least, have deep cause to
think you right. Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only
too ready to become to him what you say!"
I smiled--somewhat bitterly, it is true--in contemplation of my own
ill-luck.
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