She has no longer either the time or the strength to be a woman. Competition in the labour-market monopolizes all her time and all her strength, she begins of her own accord to despise her womanhood, and to look upon it as a burden, while she persuades herself that a state of childless liberty is everything, and that work is the only satisfaction. This is because she has become an incongruous being, who no longer believes in herself as woman! Nevertheless Strindberg was a great writer; he let woman gaze down into the abysses of her own nature, whose depths she had never guessed, and because he was afraid of her, he gave her an idea of her own power, such as was never dreamed of before. Tolstoy too, in his younger days, has described the natural instinct of women as few have succeeded in doing, and he, too, was one of those who revealed woman to herself. But there was no good in either of these writers now that the confidence which had existed between man and woman had become a thing of the past. The source of their most intimate relationship was poisoned, the union between man and woman was changed into an ugly, brutal act, from which both needed to be purified, and above the yawning gulf that stretched between the sexes sat two fierce, suspicious-looking beasts of prey, who lay in wait for one another. This was the latest revelation which woman received from her authors. The well of her existence--the rich stream of her life--was beginning to be drained, man no longer wanted it, he asked for nothing better than to be quite free of her. She had become a torment to him. There is yet another generation which consists of quite young girls, and the latest school of so-called “authors,” viz., our young naturalists. They are there, no doubt. But these young people are the last to have any idea as to how they are to treat women!