He wondered afterwards how long she had
spoken; then he counted that her strange, sweet, crude, absurd,
enchanting improvisation must have lasted half an hour. It was not what
she said; he didn't care for that, he scarcely understood it; he could
only see that it was all about the gentleness and goodness of women, and
how, during the long ages of history, they had been trampled under the
iron heel of man. It was about their equality--perhaps even (he was not
definitely conscious) about their superiority. It was about their day
having come at last, about the universal sisterhood, about their duty to
themselves and to each other. It was about such matters as these, and
Basil Ransom was delighted to observe that such matters as these didn't
spoil it. The effect was not in what she said, though she said some such
pretty things, but in the picture and figure of the half-bedizened
damsel (playing, now again, with her red fan), the visible freshness and
purity of the little effort. When she had gained confidence she opened
her eyes, and their shining softness was half the effect of her
discourse. It was full of school-girl phrases, of patches of remembered
eloquence, of childish lapses of logic, of flights of fancy which might
indeed have had success at Topeka; but Ransom thought that if it had
been much worse it would have been quite as good, for the argument, the
doctrine, had absolutely nothing to do with it.
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