.. but if we are to fight with
clean hands, _que Messieurs les Assassins commencent_! If
Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a
weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury.
How _beastly_ all this is! _Why_ do they drive us to these
extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of
several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I
should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing
sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I
won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if
they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will
leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone.
Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night
at the Lilacs or in my reconstituted bedroom at 88-90, and
wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this
vain struggle against predominant man--and away with you on
a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large
cockroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that
we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the
Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home
Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall
soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before
you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered
life of No.
Pages:
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285