boldness.

Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if
it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude:
"Blessed is the man who _destroys all barriers"?_ Florence Akemit said
as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the
matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently
challenging--threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing
not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man
who brutally and honestly beats them down, and _destroys them utterly?_
So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an _untidy
litter_ is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that
particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights.
What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so
frank in your time?

Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (_joke; laughter and loud
applause, and cries of "Go on!"_) has a little, much indeed, of the
impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it,
but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a
woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an
insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had
thought me--perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had
inspired--rational creatures, aren't we?--beg pardon--not we, then, but
I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that--for money?
Do I want the money _badly enough?_ Would I not even rather be
penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest
impulse, body and soul--_perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power
over me?_ Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down
too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and