They were her sisters, they were
her own, and the day of their delivery had dawned. This was the only
sacred cause; this was the great, the just revolution. It must triumph,
it must sweep everything before it; it must exact from the other, the
brutal, blood-stained, ravening race, the last particle of expiation! It
would be the greatest change the world had seen; it would be a new era
for the human family, and the names of those who had helped to show the
way and lead the squadrons would be the brightest in the tables of fame.
They would be names of women weak, insulted, persecuted, but devoted in
every pulse of their being to the cause, and asking no better fate than
to die for it. It was not clear to this interesting girl in what manner
such a sacrifice (as this last) would be required of her, but she saw
the matter through a kind of sunrise-mist of emotion which made danger
as rosy as success. When Miss Birdseye approached, it transfigured her
familiar, her comical shape, and made the poor little humanitary hack
seem already a martyr. Olive Chancellor looked at her with love,
remembered that she had never, in her long, unrewarded, weary life, had
a thought or an impulse for herself.
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