’I like to hear you express your sense of my defects.  The word “arrogance” does not, indeed, appear to me to be just; probably because I do not understand what you mean.  But in due time I doubtless shall; for so repeatedly have you used it, that it must stand for something real in my large and rich, yet irregular and unclarified nature.  But though I like to hear you, as I say, and think somehow your reproof does me good, by myself, I return to my native bias, and feel as if there was plenty of room in the universe for my faults, and as if I could not spend time in thinking of them, when so many things interest me more.  I have no defiance or coldness, however, as to these spiritual facts which I do not know; but I must follow my own law, and bide my time, even if, like Oedipus, I should return a criminal, blind and outcast, to ask aid from the gods.  Such possibilities, I confess, give me great awe; for I have more sense than most, of the tragic depths that may open suddenly in the life.  Yet, believing in God, anguish cannot be despair, nor guilt perdition.  I feel sure that I have never wilfully chosen, and that my life has been docile to such truth as was shown it.  In an environment like mine, what may have seemed too lofty or ambitious in my character was absolutely needed to keep the heart from breaking and enthusiasm from extinction.’

Such Egoism as this, though lacking the angel grace of unconsciousness, has a stoical grandeur that commands respect.  Indeed, in all that Margaret spoke, wrote, or did, no cynic could detect the taint of meanness.  Her elation came not from opium fumes of vanity, inhaled in close chambers of conceit, but from the stimulus of sunshine, fresh breezes, and swift movement upon the winged steed of poesy.  Her existence was bright with romantic interest to herself.  There was an amplitude and elevation in her aim, which were worthy, as she felt, of human honor and of heavenly aid; and she was buoyed up by a courageous good-will, amidst all evils, that she knew would have been recognized as heroic in the chivalric times, when “every morning brought a noble chance.”  Neither was her self-regard of an engrossing temper.  On the contrary, the sense of personal dignity taught her the worth of the lowliest human being, and her intense desire for harmonious conditions quickened a boundless compassion for the squalid, downcast, and drudging multitude.  She aspired to live in majestic fulness of benignant and joyful activity, leaving a track of light with every footstep; and, like the radiant Iduna, bearing to man the golden apples of immortality, she would have made each meeting with her fellows rich with some boon that should never fade, but brighten in bloom forever.