"Bless you, my beloved girl, my whole heart leaps to sanction that! I have symbolized the whole struggle of our race in your personal struggle--don't you see this, Paula?... Bellingham is the concentrate of devourers--and you the evolved woman who overcomes him! My hope for the race lies in you, and your victory to-day has filled my cup with happiness!... You say you do not dare to pray. I tell you, child,--the God of women gave you strength to-day. He is close to harken unto your need--for you are among the first of the elect to bring in the glory of the new day!... The animal in man has depleted the splendid energies of the Spirit. Passions of the kind you defeated to-day are overpowering women everywhere at this hour--lesser passions of lesser Bellinghams. Man's course to God has been a crawl through millenniums, instead of a flight through decades, because woman has bowed--obeyed. God is patient, but woman is aroused!... Above the din of wars, the world has heard the wailing of the women; out of the ghostly silence of famine and from beneath the debris of fallen empires--always the world has heard her cry for pity--her cry for pity now _become a Voice of Power_! All her tortured centuries have been for this--and the signs are upon us! Woman's demand for knowledge, her clamor for suffrage, her protest against eternally paying for man's lust with unblessed babes--all these are signs! But you, Paula Linster,--and what I know of this day--is the most thrilling sign of all to me!... Ah, woman is evolving; she is aroused! How shall she repay man for brutalizing her so long?" "By bringing him back to God!" Paula answered. They wept together and whispered, while the night fell about and covered the squalid room. * * * * * It was one of her emancipated nights. Paula's spirit poured out over the city, for her mind was lit with thoughts of the ultimate redemption of her race. Bellingham could not have found her in his world that hour.... Emerging from Broadway to Forty-fourth Street, at eight in the evening, she passed under the hot brilliance of a famous hotel-entrance. As it never would have occurred to her to do in a less exalted moment, Paula glanced at a little knot of men standing under the lights. The eyes of one were roving like an unclean hand over her figure. Suddenly encountering her look, a bold, eager, challenge stretched itself upon his face. In the momentary panic, her glance darted to the others instinctively for protection--and found three smiling corpses.... Here were little Bellinghams; here, the sexual drunkenness which has made Man's course "a crawl through millenniums" to God, instead of a flight through decades. What a pitiless revelation!... She clung to her big Ideal in the West. It came to her for a second like a last and single hope--that Charter was not like that.... "God is patient and woman is aroused!" she whispered.