As yet, however, there was no hint or forecast of actual martyrdom.

On the contrary, her life flowed in all the halo of a honeymoon. It

was a honeymoon, too, undisturbed by the petty jars and discomforts

of domestic life; she saw Alan too seldom for either ever to lose

the keen sense of fresh delight in the other's presence. When she

met him, she thrilled to the delicate fingertips. Herminia had

planned it so of set purpose. In her reasoned philosophy of life,

she had early decided that 'tis the wear and tear of too close daily

intercourse which turns unawares the lover into the husband; and she

had determined that in her own converse with the man she loved that

cause of disillusion should never intrude itself. They conserved

their romance through all their plighted and united life. Herminia

had afterwards no recollections of Alan to look back upon save

ideally happy ones.

So six months wore away. On the memory of those six months Herminia

was to subsist for half a lifetime. At the end of that time, Alan

began to fear that if she did not soon withdraw from the Carlyle

Place School, Miss Smith-Waters might begin to ask inconvenient

questions. Herminia, ever true to her principles, was for stopping

on till the bitter end, and compelling Miss Smith-Waters to dismiss

her from her situation. But Alan, more worldly wise, foresaw that

such a course must inevitably result in needless annoyance and

humiliation for Herminia; and Herminia was now beginning to be so

far influenced by Alan's personality that she yielded the point with

reluctance to his masculine judgment. It must be always so. The man

must needs retain for many years to come the personal hegemony he

has usurped over the woman; and the woman who once accepts him as

lover or as husband must give way in the end, even in matters of

principle, to his virile self-assertion. She would be less a woman,

and he less a man, were any other result possible. Deep down in the

very roots of the idea of sex we come on that prime antithesis,--the

male, active and aggressive; the female, sedentary, passive, and

receptive.

And even on the broader question, experience shows one it is always

so in the world we live in. No man or woman can go through life in

consistent obedience to any high principle,--not even the willing

and deliberate martyrs. We must bow to circumstances. Herminia

had made up her mind beforehand for the crown of martyrdom, the one

possible guerdon this planet can bestow upon really noble and

disinterested action. And she never shrank from any necessary

pang, incidental to the prophet's and martyr's existence. Yet even

so, in a society almost wholly composed of mean and petty souls,

incapable of comprehending or appreciating any exalted moral

standpoint, it is practically impossible to live from day to day in

accordance with a higher or purer standard. The martyr who should

try so to walk without deviation of any sort, turning neither to

the right nor to the left in the smallest particular, must

accomplish his martyrdom prematurely on the pettiest side-issues,

and would never live at all to assert at the stake the great truth

which is the lodestar and goal of his existence.




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