Those, surely, are the qualifications of the courtesan for making herself desired; and it is no wonder, if he had such an Eve by his side as was invented for him by Milton, that Adam fell. Where true womanliness is to end I do not know; but I am pretty sure of this--that it must begin in self-possession. It is not womanly for a woman to deny herself either in comforts or nourishment, or in her instincts of continence and chastity in order that someone else--whether it be her children or her husband--may over-indulge. It _is_ womanly (it is also manly), when there is danger of hurt or starvation to those for whom you are responsible, to suffer much rather than that they should suffer; but it is not in the least womanly or manly to suffer so that they may indulge. The woman who submits to the starving of herself or of her children by a drunken or a lazy husband is not in any positive sense womanly--for she is then proving herself ineffective for her social task. And she would be more effective, and therefore more womanly, if she could, by any means you like to name, drive that lazy husband into work, or abstract from that drunken husband a right share of his wages. And if by making his home a purgatory to him she succeeded, she would be more womanly in the valuable sense of the word than if (by submission to injustice) she failed, and let her children go starved. Then, again, a woman may see that the children she and her husband are producing ought never to have been born. And if that is so, is it womanly for her to go on bearing children at the dictates of the man, even though St. Paul says, “Wives, obey your husbands”? Is she any more womanly, if she knowingly brings diseased offspring into the world, than he is manly in the fathering of them?