Begin to-day, my dear girl, to grow beauty which shall make you a power and an influence in the world where you move, and which shall invite, rather than fear, the approach of time.

To Mrs. White Peak

One of the Pillars of Respectable Society

Ever since your call and our conversation regarding Sybyl Marchmont, I have felt a rising tide of indignation.  It has reached the perigee mark and must overflow.  If it reaches you and gives you a thorough soaking, I shall feel satisfied.

I have always known you were only half-developed.  There are many such people in the world.  They serve their purpose and often do much good.  They miss a great deal of life, but as they rarely know that they miss anything, it is a waste of sentiment to pity them.

I have pitied you, nevertheless.  I have often wished I could give you the vital qualities you lack.

My pity turned to indignation when I heard you express yourself in such unqualified terms of condemnation regarding other women who happened to be unlike you in temperament.

You say there is a certain line which no well-born and womanly woman can pass in thought or feeling or action.

You regard the true women of earth as a higher and rarer order of creation than the best of men, and any woman who by action or word confesses herself to be quite human in her temperament, you feel is, to a certain extent, “unclean and unsexed.”  You believe the really good women of earth are always on a plane above and beyond the physical.  When any woman falls from her pedestal you despise her.

How dare you, madam, sitting in your cold, white chastity, lay down laws of what you consider purity, morality, and cleanliness, for other human souls?

How dare you condemn those who do not reach your standard?

What do you know of life, great, palpitating, throbbing, vital life, terrible and beautiful life, terrible while passing through the valleys of temptation, beautiful upon the heights of self-control?

How dare you assume greater virtue, greater respectability, greater fineness of sentiment, than the tempest-tossed, passion-beaten souls, about you?

What do you know of real virtue, real strength?

You have been poor, you tell me, in worldly riches, and you have been lonely, yet you have never once degraded your womanhood by an “unworthy " impulse.  Never known a temptation of the senses.  Those things disgusted you.

You have preferred toil to taking favours from inferiors, and you have kept yourself clean in thought, word, and deed, and now you have the reward of such virtues—­a good home, a husband, and children.

You are a more devoted mother than wife, as you have always dwelt upon a lofty white peak of chaste womanhood, from which any descent into the earthly realms of life and love was repugnant—­so rarely “pure” and high your nature.