In Rochester no one had turned to look at the doctor's
daughter as she walked by, for, in truth, there were many girls much
prettier and more piquant than Susan Gillespie. But, nevertheless, she
had had her dreams about the lover that some day was to come and carry
her off under a wreath of orange blossoms and a white veil. She did
not aspire to a struggling hoard of suitors, but she thought it would
be only fair and entirely within the realm of the possible if she had
two; most girls had two.
Now she felt the secret elation that follows on the dream realized.
She did not tell herself that David and Leff were in love with her.
She would have regarded all speculations on such a sacred subject as
low and unmaidenly. But the consciousness of it permeated her being
with a gratified sense of her worth as a woman. It made her feel her
value. Like all girls of her primitive kind she estimated herself not
by her own measure, but by the measure of a man's love for her. Now
that men admired her she felt that she was taking her place as a unit
of importance. Her sense of achievement in this advent of the desiring
male was not alone pleased vanity, it went back through the ages to the
time when woman won her food and clothing, her right to exist, through
the power of her sex, when she whose attraction was strongest had the
best corner by the fire, the choicest titbit from the hunt, and the
strongest man to fight off rivals and keep her for himself.
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