She had given him her life, little aid.  She might have closely counselled, wound in and out with his ideas.  Sensible of capacity, she confessed to the having been morally subdued, physically as well; swept onward; and she was arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the river-floods by the dip of a branch.  Time that it should be!  But was not Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system for the education of women, right when he declared them to be unfitted to speak an opinion on any matter external to the household or in a crisis of the household?  She had not agreed with him:  he presented stinging sentences, which irritated more than they enlightened.  Now it seemed to her, that the model women of men make pleasant slaves, not true mates:  they lack the worldly training to know themselves or take a grasp of circumstances.

There is an exotic fostering of the senses for women, not the strengthening breath of vital common air.  If good fortune is with them, all may go well:  the stake of their fates is upon the perpetual smooth flow of good fortune.  She had never joined to the cry of the women.  Few among them were having it in the breast as loudly.

Hard on herself, too, she perceived how the social rebel had reduced her mind to propitiate a simulacrum, reflected from out, of an enthroned Society within it, by an advocacy of the existing laws and rules and habits.  Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker:  none so conservative.  Not until we are driven back upon an unviolated Nature, do we call to the intellect to think radically:  and then we begin to think of our fellows.

Or when we have set ourselves in motion direct for the doing of the right thing:  have quitted the carriage at the station, and secured the ticket, and entered the train, counting the passage of time for a simple rapid hour before we have eased heart in doing justice to ourself and to another; then likewise the mind is lighted for radiation.  That doing of the right thing, after a term of paralysis, cowardice—­any evil name—­ is one of the mighty reliefs, equal to happiness, of longer duration.

Nataly had it.  But her mind was actually radiating, and the comfort to her heart evoked the image of Dartrey Fenellan.  She saw a possible reason for her bluntness to the coming scene with Dudley.

At once she said, No! and closed the curtain; knowing what was behind, counting it nought.  She repeated almost honestly her positive negative.  How we are mixed of the many elements! she thought, as an observer; and self-justifyingly thought on, and with truth, that duty urged her upon this journey; and proudly thought, that she had not a shock of the painful great organ in her breast at the prospect at the end, or any apprehension of its failure to carry her through.