"I like this country better now," the shaken girl resumed. "I could lie down in it and ask only for sleep. I should like to think of you here. How nobly self-respecting you must be, to speak as you did! Our dreams of heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality. I have been lately thinking of myself as an outcast of my sex, and to have a good woman liking me a little . . . loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I should have kissed you, and not made this exhibition of myself--and if you call it hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth together--if that idea of jealousy had not been in your head. You had it from him." "I have not alluded to it in any word that I can recollect." "He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released. I have noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on women as constant by their nature. They are the needles, and he the magnet. Jealousy of you, Miss Dale! Laetitia, may I speak?" "Say everything you please." "I could wish:--Do you know my baptismal name?" "Clara." "At last! I could wish . . . that is, if it were your wish. Yes, I could wish that. Next to independence, my wish would be that. I risk offending you. Do not let your delicacy take arms against me. I wish him happy in the only way that he can be made happy. There is my jealousy." "Was it what you were going to say just now?" "No." "I thought not." "I was going to say--and I believe the rack would not make me truthful like you, Laetitia--well, has it ever struck you: remember, I do see his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is attractive, he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you . . . I have no right to ask; I know that men must have faults, I do not expect them to be saints; I am not one; I wish I were." "Has it never struck me . . . ?" Laetitia prompted her. "That very few women are able to be straightforwardly sincere in their speech, however much they may desire to be?" "They are differently educated. Great misfortune brings it to them." "I am sure your answer is correct. Have you ever known a woman who was entirely an Egoist?" "Personally known one? We are not better than men." "I do not pretend that we are. I have latterly become an Egoist, thinking of no one but myself, scheming to make use of every soul I meet. But then, women are in the position of inferiors. They are hardly out of the nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and if they have beauty, no wonder they turn it to a weapon and make as many captives as they can. I do not wonder! My sense of shame at my natural weakness and the arrogance of men would urge me to make hundreds captive, if that is being a coquette. I should not have compassion for those lofty birds, the hawks. To see them with their wings clipped would amuse me. Is there any other way of punishing them?" "Consider what you lose in punishing them." "I consider what they gain if we do not."