What was there to stop him?
Why should he not climb from power to power till he had reached the end! And as he talked and dreamed there grew up in her heart a fierce anger.
What would her own future be?
She would marry probably some man of her own class, settle down to the average woman's "life"; be allowed, like a spoilt child, to still "take an interest" in public affairs: hold "drawing-rooms" attended by cranks and political nonentities: be President, perhaps, of the local Woman's Liberal League.

The alternative: to spend her days glued to a desk, penning exhortations to the people that Carleton and his like might or might not allow them to read; while youth and beauty slipped away from her, leaving her one of the ten thousand other lonely, faded women, forcing themselves unwelcome into men's jobs.

There came to her a sense of having been robbed of what was hers by primitive eternal law.

Greyson had been right.

She did love power--power to serve and shape the world.