END OF BOOK II
BOOK III
DERELICT
CHAPTER I
Virtue is the personality of many women. Rob them of it, those of
them whose value it enhances, and you prize a jewel from its setting,
you wrench a star out of the mystery of the heavens and bring it down
to earth. It is a common trend of the mind in these modern days to
make nobility out of the women whose personality needs no virtue to
lift it to a pedestal of fame. But really, it is they who make the
nobility for themselves. Phryne of Athens, Helen of Troy, Catherine
of Russia, Mary of Scotland--these are women who have ennobled
themselves without aid of eulogy. Personality has been theirs
without necessity for the robe of virtue to grace them in the eyes
of the world. But with the seemingly lesser women, the women of
seemingly no vast account--with those whose whole individuality
depends upon the invaluable possession of their virtue, no great epic
can well be sung, no loud paean sounded. You may find just a lyric
here, a rondel there, set to the lilt of a phrase in an idle hour
and sung in a passing moment to send a tired heart asleep. But that
is all. Yet they are the women upon whom the world has spent six
thousand years in the making; they are the women at whose breasts
are fed the sons of men.
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