Sally Bishop : $b A romanceThurston, E. Temple (Ernest Temple)
General
Sally Bishop : $b A romance
Thurston, E. Temple (Ernest Temple)
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
Sally wondered what Miss Hallard would say if she were to hear this.
She wondered what she would have said herself, had the expression
of such ideas come from Mr. Arthur. There was no doubt that she would
have repudiated them with vehement denial. With Traill she said
nothing--felt that he was right. Why was that? She could not tell.
It was beyond her power to analyze the situation as closely as it
required. It was beyond her ability to realize that a man may say
he is the son of God, if it be that he has behind the words the power
of the personality of a Jesus Christ. Traill had the personality--the
dominance behind him in what he said--that was all. He might have
told her that women were only the chattels of men, born to slavery,
the property of their masters, and she would not have denied it to
him.
"What in the name of God are women?" he had said more than once in
his life--"Is one of them ever worth all the while?" And he thought
he had meant it. To a great extent, he acted up to it as well. These
are the questions that men of the type put to themselves over and
over again--but there are Cleopatras to mate with Antonys, Helens
of Troy and Lady Hamiltons who can snap their fingers in the face
of such odds and win. But Sally was not of this blood. She is the
lamb that goes willing to the slaughter, the woman, whom a man like
Traill, when once he holds the trembling threads of her affection,
can drive to the uttermost.
"Then you give no liberty to a woman?" she said.
"No--not the liberty she talks about. Not the idea of liberty that
she gets from these suffragist pamphleteers."
"I'd like you to meet my friend, Miss Hallard," said Sally.
"Why? Who's Miss Hallard? What is she?"
"She's an artist--I share rooms with her."
"Why would you like me to meet her?"
"I'd like to hear you two argue. She thinks just the opposite. She
thinks--"
"I never argue with a woman," Traill interrupted.
"You think so poorly of us?" She tried to say it with spirit--struck
the flint in her eyes, contracted her lips to the hard, thin line.
"As women? No--the very best." Her looks did not worry him. Water
pouring over marble runs off as smoothly. "You want to be judged as
men--you never will be till you can cut your hair short and dress
the part. Clothes have the deuce of a lot to do with it. I can love
a woman, but, my God, I can't argue with her."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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