That newer and deeper influence had
come, and the result thereof was a woman standing upon the verge of the
real tragedy to her life, which was not in having married the man, but
in facing that marriage with her new intelligence and a transformed soul.
Men can face that sort of thing with a kind of philosophy, not because
men are better or wiser, but because it really means less to them. They
have resources of life, they can bury themselves in their ambitions good
or bad, but a woman can only bury herself in her affections, unless her
heart has been closed; and in that case she herself has lost much of what
made her adorable. And while she may go on with the closed heart and
become a saint, even saintship is hardly sufficient to compensate any man
or woman for a half-lived life. The only thing worth doing in this world
is to live life according to one's convictions--and one's heart. He or
she who sells that fine independence for a mess of pottage, no matter if
the mess be spiced, sells, as the Master said, the immortal part of him.
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