Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/384

 because he is helpless to fight back — he discovers it all, and when all is done he has little faith in human nature left.

"This experience I had at your hands, to the last ounce. I know the 'friendship' that couldn't 'stand the gaff' of public opinion, the ingratitude that makes no count of personal sacrifice, the rapacity that takes it to the border of dishonesty to attain its end. Yet, curiously enough, after the lapse of years these things shrink into comparative insignificance beside the uncalled for insolence, unwarranted affronts, which were offered me by many of you with whom I had not even a speaking acquaintance.

"My friendlessness aroused no pity in your hearts; I was only an unresisting target at which to throw a convenient stone. For years I stood out in the open, as it were, with the storms to whip the life out of me, and not one of you offered me a cloak.

"Upon any nature this experience would have had its effect — most women, I think, it would have crushed. In me it developed traits that in other circumstances might always have lain dormant. Along with a pride that was tremendous, it aroused a desire for revenge that was savage in its ferocity. I've lived for some such hour as this — worked, and sacrificed my happiness for it.

"If it could have been of my own planning I could not have conceived of a more gratifying situation than this.

"I know how much my decision means to you; I know that there isn't one here who would not be affected directly or indirectly by the collapse of this project; that it will take years for you to get back even to the position you were in when you came, quite as well as I realize that its completion would put you on your feet."