“Oh!” gasped Kate.

“Or whether you are really an egotist—­as some think.”

“Oh!” breathed Kate again.

“As for me, I always say that a person can’t get anywhere without egotism.  The word never did scare me.  Egotism is a kind of yeast that makes the human bread rise.  I don’t see how we could get along without it.  As you say, I’d better wait before answering you.  You’ve asked me an important question, and I’d like to give it thought.  I can see that you’d be a good and useful woman whichever thing you did.  But the question is, would you be a happy one in a home?  You’ve got the idea of a public life in your head, and very likely that influences you without your realizing it.”

“I don’t say I’m not ambitious,” cried Kate, really stirred.  “But that ought to be a credit to me!  It’s ridiculous using the word ‘ambitious’ as a credit to a man, and making it seem like a shame to a woman.  Ambition is personal force.  Why shouldn’t I have force?”

“There are things I can’t put into words,” said Mrs. Dennison, taking a folded handkerchief from her bead bag and delicately wiping her face, “and one of them is what I think about women.  I’m a woman myself, and it doesn’t seem becoming to me to say that I think they’re sacred.”

“No more sacred than men!” interrupted Kate hotly.  “Life is sacred—­if it’s good.  I can’t say I think it sacred when it’s deleterious.  It’s that pale, twilight sort of a theory which has kept women from doing the things they were capable of doing.  Men kept thinking of them as sacred, and then they were miserably disappointed when they found they weren’t.  They talk about women’s dreams, but I think men dream just as much as women, or more, and that they moon around with ideas about angel wives, and then are horribly shocked when they find they’ve married limited, commonplace, selfish creatures like themselves.  I say let us train them both, make them comrades, give them a chance to share the burdens and the rewards, and see if we can’t reduce the number of broken hearts in the world.”

“There are some burdens,” put in Mrs. Dennison, “which men and women cannot share.  The burden of child-bearing, which is the most important one there is, has to be borne by women alone.  You yourself were talking about that only a little while ago.  It’s such a strange sort of a thing,—­so sweet and so terrible,—­and it so often takes a woman to the verge of the grave, or over it, that I suppose it is that which gives a sacredness to women.  Then, too, they’ll work all their lives long for some one they love with no thought of any return except love.  That makes them sacred, too.  Most of them believe in God, even when they’re bad, and they believe in those they love even when they ought not.  Maybe they’re right in this and maybe they’re not.  Perhaps you’ll say that shows their lack of sense.  But I say it helps the world on, just the same.  It may not be sensible—­but it makes them sacred.”