''
Why did Mildred refuse Stanley Baird and cut herself
off from him, even after her hopes of Donald Keith
died through lack of food, real or imaginary? It
would be gratifying to offer this as a case of pure
courage and high principle, untainted of the motives which
govern ordinary human actions. But unluckily this is
a biography, not a romance, a history and not a eulogy.
And Mildred Gower is a human being, even as you
and I, not a galvanized embodiment of superhuman
virtues such as you and I are pretending to be, perhaps
even to ourselves. The explanation of her strange
aberration, which will be doubted or secretly condemned
by every woman of the sheltered classes who loves her
dependence and seeks to disguise it as something sweet
and fine and ``womanly''--the explanation of her almost
insane act of renunciation of all that a lady holds
most dear is simple enough, puzzling though she found
it. Ignorance, which accounts for so much of the
squalid failure in human life, accounts also for much if
not all the most splendid audacious achievement.
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