Such a perfect
conformity soothes us into believing that while we witness it we are of
it--ourselves conforming. These splendid creatures here, so superbly
static--idle, you might say (only they wouldn't understand you), indulging
their strength--are strong and able precisely because they have submitted
themselves---"
"Unlike the Poles?" She reminded him of their first conversation, and saw
that he remembered it. He bowed to her.
"Let me finish. These existences, emanations, essences, what you will, are
submiss, not to man, but to Nature. They are as passive as Earth herself,
and as immune. They derive their strength from her. That's our only
reasonable service." Whether he intended it or not, the effect of this
kind of talk was to make her view submission to the world's voice as a
reasonable service.
It was not so odd as it may seem that her intimates had always been men.
That reticence of hers which repelled her own sex was precisely that in
her which attracted, by provoking, the other. After her dumb childhood, to
which she never looked back, came her opening girlhood, and on the
threshold of that stood Jack Senhouse, the loyal servitor, the one man who
had loved her without an ounce of self-seeking.
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