I soon felt, however, that such delicacy was out of place and lost upon her; she was impervious to any fancies of that kind.
"When at the High School," she told me, "I made it my purpose in life to reconcile my duties toward society with those that I owed to myself. People who are against women's emancipation say that no woman can at the same time go in for book-learning and be a good wife and mother. That is their strongest argument. But, if only women themselves would recognize that this is possible, and that everything can be made to agree! I myself, my dear Madame, finished my course of Sociology in Brussels, where I even published a short paper in French. Since then I have followed the onward march of science, so as to be always up-to-date: I am reading continually, and am occupied in translating at present. … Sometimes, too, I am able to help Joseph with facts and information. And now I ask you, my dear Madame, could the most stolid bourgeoise, if placed in my circumstances, give herself more to her child than I do! Consider, I have no nursemaid, nor any of the aids which those much belauded 'good mothers' enjoy. I suckle the baby myself, I
