Worst of all, she had invited, she had implored, Harry when her longings were manifest to reason with her. Her longings now always were manifest; but when he reasoned with her it was out of the scorpions of her revulsion that she answered him. He once said, “It appears to me that your attitude is changed from the night you first mentioned this.” She said, “Harry, what’s disturbing me when we talk about it is not my own case, it’s the general case. Here’s a woman--never mind that it’s me--here’s a woman that has made a success in life, that has abandoned it and that wants to go back to it. You argue she mustn’t. I could say it’s monstrous. I don’t say that. I choose to say it’s pitiful. If it was a man, he’d go. He wouldn’t think twice about it. And if he did think twice about it, every opinion and every custom that he consulted would tell him he was right to go. It happens to be a woman, therefore--well, that’s the reason! It’s a woman--therefore, No. That’s the beginning of the reason and the end of the reason. A woman--therefore, No. Oh, it’s pitiful--for women.” Harry questioned: “Every opinion and every custom would tell a man to go? No, no. You’re taking too much for granted, Rosalie. He wouldn’t go, necessarily, and he wouldn’t be advised to go, if he had duties that pulled him the other way.” She gave a note of amusement. “But that’s the point. He never would have such duties. It’s notable that a man always makes his duties and his ambitions go hand in hand. Yes, it’s notable, that.” “Well, put it another way. Suppose it wasn’t necessary for him to go.... Suppose nothing depended on his going, much on his staying. That makes the parallel, Rosalie.” She said to him, “Ah, I’ll agree to that. Let that make the parallel. They’d tell a man in such a case, ‘Man, take up your ambitions. You are a man. You have yourself to think of.’ That’s what they’d say. Well, that’s what I’m saying. ‘I am a woman. I have myself to think of.’” He asked, “And shall you, Rosalie?” She said, “I’m thinking--every day.” The more she thought, the more she stiffened. This was the thought against whose goad she always came--Why should she be hesitant? What a position! What a light upon the case and upon the status of woman that, just because she was a woman, she must not consider her own, her personal interests! For no other reason; just that; because she was a woman! “I’ve shut a gate behind me,” she on another day said to Harry. “That’s what I’ve done. I’ve come out of a place and shut the gate behind me and because I am a woman I mustn’t open it and go back. That’s what a woman’s life is--always shutting gates behind her. There aren’t gates for a man. There’re just turnstiles. As he came out so he can always go back--even to his youth. When he’s fifty he still can go back and have the society of twenty and play the fool as he did at twenty. Can a woman?” “That’s physical,” said Harry. “A man much longer keeps his youth.”