It was during these last weeks at Bosnia Road that Eve became fully conscious of that spirit of revolt that is one of the dominating features of contemporary life, for she was experiencing in her own person the thoughts and tendencies of a great movement, suffering its discontents, feeling its hopes and passions. When she tried to analyse these tendencies in herself, she was confronted with the disharmonies of her life, disharmonies that reacted all the more keenly on a generous and impulsive nature. She was necessary to nobody, not even to the man who had thought that it would be pleasant to marry her, for she knew that in a month he would be as contented as ever with his old bachelor life. She had no personal corner, no sacred place full of the subtle and pleasant presence of the individual “I.” She had none of the simple and primitive responsibilities that provide many women with a natural and organic satisfaction. A new class had arisen, the class of the unattached working women, and she was sharing the experiences of thousands. It was a sense of defencelessness that angered her. She had no weapon. She could only retaliate upon society by shutting her mouth and holding her head a little higher. Her individuality was threatened. She was denied the chance of living a life of self-expression, and was told with casual cynicism that she must do such work as society chose to offer her, or starve. Of course, there were the chances of escape, the little, secret, fatal doorways that men were willing to leave open. Some women availed themselves of these opportunities, nor was Eve so prejudiced as to imagine that all women were martyrs and less hot blooded than the men. She had had the same doors opened to her. She might have become a mistress, or have married a man who was physically distasteful to her, and she understood now why many women were so bitter against anything that was male. It was not man, but the sex spirit, and all its meaner predilections. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred concerned themselves with nothing but a woman’s face and figure. They reacted to physical impressions, and Eve realised the utter naturalness of it all. The working woman had got outside the old conventions. She was trying to do unsexual things, and to talk an unsexual language to men who had not changed. It was like muddling up business and sentiment, and created an impossible position, so long as the male nature continued to react in the way it did. Sexual solicitation or plain indifference, these were the two extreme fates that bounded the life of the working woman.