Olive could see that she produced herself quite as well as one
of these gentlemen had foretold the other that she would. Miss
Chancellor knew what had passed between them as well as if she had heard
it; Mr. Gracie had promised that he would lead her on, that she should
justify his description and prove the raciest of her class. They would
laugh about her as they went away, lighting their cigars, and for many
days afterwards their discourse would be enlivened with quotations from
the "women's rights girl."
It was amazing how many ways men had of being antipathetic; these two
were very different from Basil Ransom, and different from each other,
and yet the manner of each conveyed an insult to one's womanhood. The
worst of the case was that Verena would be sure not to perceive this
outrage--not to dislike them in consequence. There were so many things
that she hadn't yet learned to dislike, in spite of her friend's earnest
efforts to teach her. She had the idea vividly (that was the marvel) of
the cruelty of man, of his immemorial injustice; but it remained
abstract, platonic; she didn't detest him in consequence. What was the
use of her having that sharp, inspired vision of the history of the sex
(it was, as she had said herself, exactly like Joan of Arc's absolutely
supernatural apprehension of the state of France) if she wasn't going to
carry it out, if she was going to behave as the ordinary pusillanimous,
conventional young lady? It was all very well for her to have said that
first day that she would renounce: did she look, at such a moment as
this, like a young woman who had renounced? Suppose this glittering,
laughing Burrage youth, with his chains and rings and shining shoes,
should fall in love with her and try to bribe her, with his great
possessions, to practise renunciations of another kind--to give up her
holy work and to go with him to New York, there to live as his wife,
partly bullied, partly pampered, in the accustomed Burrage manner? There
was as little comfort for Olive as there had been on the whole alarm in
the recollection of that off-hand speech of Verena's about her
preference for "free unions.
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