As to other practical matters, about which Alan ventured delicately

to throw out a passing question or two, Herminia was perfectly

frank, with the perfect frankness of one who thinks and does

nothing to be ashamed of. She had always been self-supporting, she

said, and she would be self-supporting still. To her mind, that

was an essential step towards the emancipation of women. Their

friendship implied for her no change of existence, merely an

addition to the fulness of her living. He was the complement of

her being. Every woman should naturally wish to live her whole

life, to fulfil her whole functions; and that she could do only by

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becoming a mother, accepting the orbit for which nature designed

her. In the end, no doubt, complete independence would be secured

for each woman by the civilized state, or in other words by the

whole body of men, who do the hard work of the world, and who would

collectively guarantee every necessary and luxury to every woman of

the community equally. In that way alone could perfect liberty of

choice and action be secured for women; and she held it just that

women should so be provided for, because the mothers of the

community fulfil in the state as important and necessary a function

as the men themselves do. It would be well, too, that the mothers

should be free to perform that function without preoccupation of

any sort. So a free world would order things. But in our present

barbaric state of industrial slavery, capitalism, monopoly,--in

other words under the organized rule of selfishness,--such a course

was impossible. Perhaps, as an intermediate condition, it might

happen in time that the women of certain classes would for the most

part be made independent at maturity each by her own father; which

would produce for them in the end pretty much the same general

effect of freedom. She saw as a first step the endowment of the

daughter. But meanwhile there was nothing for it save that as many

women as could should aim for themselves at economic liberty, in

other words at self-support. That was an evil in itself, because

obviously the prospective mothers of a community should be relieved

as far as possible front the stress and strain of earning a

livelihood; should be set free to build up their nervous systems to

the highest attainable level against the calls of maternity. But

above all things we must be practical; and in the practical world

here and now around us, no other way existed for women to be free

save the wasteful way of each earning her own livelihood.

Therefore she would continue her schoolwork with her pupils as long

as the school would allow her; and when that became impossible,

would fall back upon literature.




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