"You must reach down your hands to them and draw them up to you," she
answered in a tone of tonic inspiration. "You are to claim the same
right to express your emotions that a man has. You are to offer your
friendship to both men and women on the same frank terms, with no
degrading hesitancy caused by an embarrassment on account of your sex.
It is his due and yours. No form of affection is to be withheld from
him. It is to be done frankly and impressively, and when the time
comes--" I can hardly write this, but the memory of the wonderful though
fanatic light in Jane's eyes makes me able to scrawl it--"that you feel
the mating instinct in you move towards any man, I charge you that you
are to consider it a sacred obligation to express it with the same
honesty that a man would express the same thing to you, in like case,
even if he has shown no sign of that impulse toward you. No contortions
and contemptible indirect method of attack, but a fearless one that is
yours by right, and his though he may not acknowledge it. The barbaric
and senseless old convention that denies women the right of selection,
for which God has given her the superior instinct, is to be broken down
by just such women as you. A woman less dowered by beauty and all
feminine charm could not do it just yet, but to you, to whom the
command of men is a natural gift, is granted the wonderful chance to
prove that it can be done, honestly and triumphantly, with no sacrifice
of the sacredness of womanhood.
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