"
Later on she recurred to the idea of self-sacrifice: much other
deepest feeling seemed to gather about that.
"I am afraid that you do not realize what it means to a woman when
a principle like this is involved. Can any man ever know? Does he
dream what it means to us women to sacrifice ourselves as they
often require us to do? I have been travelling in old lands--so
old that the history of each goes back until we can follow it with
our eyes no longer. But as far as we can see, we see this
sorrow--the sorrow of women who have wished to be first in the love
of the men they have loved. You, who read everything! Cannot you
see them standing all through history, the sad figures of girls who
have only asked for what they gave, love in its purity and its
singleness--have only asked that there should have been no other
before them? And cannot you see what a girl feels when she
consents to accept anything less,--that she is lowered to herself
from that time on,--has lost her own ideal of herself, as well as
her ideal of the man she loves? And cannot you see how she lowers
herself in his eyes also and ceases to be his ideal, through her
willingness to live with him on a lower plane? That is our wound.
That is our trouble and our sorrow: I have found it wherever I have
gone."
Long before she said this to him, she had questioned him closely
about Rowan. He withheld from her knowledge of some things which
he thought she could better bear to learn later and by degrees.
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