“I have nothing to say. It is not a thing that can be argued out. Those women’s rights people are the worst of all. Because they think women have been “subject” in the past. Women never have been subject. Never can be. The proof of this is the way men have always been puzzled and everlastingly trying fresh theories; founded _on_ the very small experience of women any man is capable of having. Disabilities, imposed by law, are a stupid insult to women, but have never touched them as individuals. In the long run they injure only men. For they keep back the civilisation of the outside world, which is the only thing men can make. It is not everything. It is a sort of result, poor and shaky because the real inside civilisation of women, the one thing that has been in them from the first and is not in the natural man, not made by “things,” is kept out of it. Women do not need civilisation. It is apt to bore them. _But_ it can never rise above their level. They keep it back. That does not matter, to themselves. But it matters to men. And if they want their old civilisation to be anything but a dreary-weary puzzle, they must leave off imagining themselves a race of gods fighting against chaos, and thinking of women as part of the chaos they have to civilise. There isn’t any “chaos.” Never has been. It’s the principal masculine illusion. It is not a truth to say that women must be civilised. Feminists are not only an insult to womanhood. They are a libel on the universe.” In the awful presence she had spoken herself out, found and recited her best most liberating words. The little unseen room shone, its shining speaking up to her from small things immediately under her eyes. Light, pouring from her speech, sent a radiance about the thick black head and its monstrous bronze face. He might have his thoughts, might even look them, from the utmost abyss of crude male life, but he had helped her, and his blind unconscious outlines shared the unknown glory. But she doubted if she would remember that thoughts flowed more easily, with surprising ease, as if given, waiting, ready to be scanned and stated, when one’s eyes ceased to look outwards. If she could remember it, it might prove to be the solution of social life. “These things are all matters of opinion. Whereas it is a matter of indisputable _fact_ that in the past women have been subject.” “If you believe that it is impossible for us to associate. Because we are living in two utterly different worlds.” “On the contrary. This difference is a most excellent basis for association.” “You think I can cheerfully regard myself as an emancipated slave, with traditions of slavery for memory and the form of a slave as an everlasting heritage?” “Remember that heredity is cross-wise. You are probably more the daughter of your father ...” “_That_ won’t help you, thank you. If anything I am my mother’s son.” “Ah--ah, what is this, you are a _son_. Do you see?” “That’s a piece of English feudalism.”