" I gathered from her tone that the Joan
of Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at
that particular moment I should have suggested Katherine--during the
earlier stages--listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio. "Are
you suggesting that all women should take her for a model?"
"No," I said, "I'm not. Though were we living in Chaucer's time I
might; and you would not think it even silly. What I'm impressing
upon you is that the human race has yet a little way to travel before
the average man can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King
Arthur--the King Arthur of the poetical legend, I mean. Don't be too
impatient with him."
"Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient
himself with himself," considered Robina. "He ought to be feeling so
ashamed of himself as to be willing to do anything."
The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or
amusement I cannot tell.
"And woman," I said, "had the power been hers, would she have used it
to sweeter purpose? Where is your evidence? Your Cleopatras,
Pompadours, Jezebels; your Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of
China; your Faustines of all ages and all climes; your Mother
Brownriggs; your Lucretia Borgias, Salomes--I could weary you with
names. Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house
slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle
Ages; your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the
tortured grove.
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