Then I bethought me of my long vigils of work and thought, the slow, bitter years in which I "ate my bread with tears, and sat weeping on my bed," and I remembered that some of those tears were for the sorrows of that very sex which was now accusing me of organised injustice. But I replied gently: "I am no tyrant; I am a simple, peaceful citizen, and it is as much as I can do to earn my bread and the bread of some of thy sex. Life is hard enough for both sexes, without setting one against the other. We are both the outcome of the same great forces, and both of us have our special selfishnesses, advantages, and drawbacks. If there is any cruelty, it is Nature's handiwork, not man's. So far from trampling on womanhood, we have let a woman reign over us for more than half a century. We worship womanhood, we have celebrated woman in song, picture, and poem, and half civilisation has adored the Madonna. Let us have woman's point of view and the truth about her psychology, by all means. But beware lest she provoke us too far. The _Ewigweibliche_ has become too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting woman question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for equal purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of the Orient--" As I spoke the figure before me appeared to be undergoing a transformation, and, ere I had finished, I perceived I was talking to an angry, seedy man in a red muffler. "Thee keeps down the proletariat," he interrupted venomously. "Thee lives on the sweat of his brow, while thee fattens at ease. Thee plants thy foot on his neck." "Do I?" I exclaimed, lifting up my foot involuntarily. Mistaking the motion, he disappeared, and in his stead I saw a withered old pauper with the Victoria Cross on his breast. "I went to the mouth of hell for thee," he said, with large reproachful eyes; "and thou leavest me to rot in the workhouse." "I am awfully sorry!" I said. "I never heard of thee. It is the nation--" "The nation!" he cried scornfully. "_Thou_ art the nation; the nation is only a collection of individuals. Thou art responsible. Thou art the man." "Thou art the man," echoed a thousand voices: "Society is only an abstraction." And, looking round, I saw, to my horror, that the women had quite disappeared, and their places were filled by men of all complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes. "I died in the streets," shouted an old cripple in the background--"round the corner from thy house, in thy wealthy parish--I died of starvation in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and a generation after Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'" "If I had only known!" I murmured, while my eyes grew moist. "Why didst thou not come to me?" "I was too proud to beg," he answered. "The really poor never beg." "Then how am I responsible?" I retorted.