“Yes, you might be all that, and be a man; but you’d be an exceptional man, and I don’t think you’re an exceptional woman.  If you’ve failed, it is n’t your temperament that’s to blame.”

“I think it is.  The wrong is somewhere in me individually.  I know it is.”

Dr. Mulbridge, walking beside her, with his hands clasped behind him, threw up his head and laughed.  “Well, have it your own way, Miss Breen.  Only I don’t agree with you.  Why should you wish to spare your sex at your own expense?  But that’s the way with some ladies, I’ve noticed.  They approve of what women attempt because women attempt it, and they believe the attempt reflects honor on them.  It’s tremendous to think what men could accomplish for their sex, if they only hung together as women do.  But they can’t.  They haven’t the generosity.”

“I think you don’t understand me,” said Grace, with a severity that amused him.  “I wished to regard myself, in taking up this profession, entirely as I believed a man would have regarded himself.”

“And were you able to do it?”

“No,” she unintentionally replied to this unexpected question.

“Haw, haw, haw!” laughed Dr. Mulbridge at her helpless candor.  “And are you sure that you give it up as a man would?”

“I don’t know how you mean,” she said, vexed and bewildered.

“Do you do it fairly and squarely because you believe that you’re a failure, or because you partly feel that you have n’t been fairly dealt with?”

“I believe that if Mrs. Maynard had had the same confidence in me that she would have had in any man I should not have failed.  But every woman physician has a double disadvantage that I hadn’t the strength to overcome,—­her own inexperience and the distrust of other women.”

“Well, whose fault is that?”

“Not the men’s.  It is the men alone who give women any chance.  They are kind and generous and liberal-minded.  I have no blame for them, and I have no patience with women who want to treat them as the enemies of women’s advancement.  Women can’t move a step forwards without their sufferance and help.  Dr. Mulbridge,” she cried, “I wish to apologize for the hasty and silly words I used to you the day I came to ask you to consult with me.  I ought to have been grateful to you for consenting at first, and when you took back your consent I ought to have considered your position.  You were entirely right.  We had no common ground to meet on, and I behaved like a petulant, foolish, vulgar girl!”

“No, no,” he protested, laughing in recollection of the scene.  “You were all right, and I was in a fix; and if your own fears had n’t come to the rescue, I don’t know how I should have got out of it.  It would have been disgraceful, wouldn’t it, to refuse a lady’s request.  You don’t know how near I was to giving way.  I can tell you, now that it’s all over.  I had never seen a lady of our profession before,” he added hastily, “and my curiosity was up.  I always had my doubts about the thoroughness of women’s study, and I should have liked to see where your training failed.  I must say I found it very good,—­I’ve told you that.  You wouldn’t fail individually:  you would fail because you are a woman.”