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PHASE I

I

The life of Mary Throgmorton, viewed as onewould scan the chronicles of history, impersonally,without regard to the conventions, isthe life of a woman no more than fulfilled in theelements of her being.

All women would be as Mary Throgmorton if theydared. All women would love as Mary Throgmortonloved--suffer as she suffered. Perhaps not all mightyield, as she yielded towards the end; not all mightmake her sacrifices. But, in the latitudinousperspective of Time where everything vanishes to the pointof due proportion, she must range with that vast armyof women who have hungered, loved, been fed andpaid the reckoning with the tears out of their eyesand the very blood out of their hearts.

It is only when she comes to be observed in theimmediate and narrow surroundings of her circumstancethat her life stands out tragically apart. Shebecomes then as a monument, set up on a high andlonely hill amongst the many of those hills in drowsyDevon, a monument, silently claiming the birthrightof all women which the laws men make by force haveso ungenerously circumscribed.

There is no woman who could look at thatmonument without secret emotions of a deep respect, whilethere were many in her lifetime who spurned MaryThrogmorton with tongue and with a glance of eye,and still would spurn her to-day in the narrow streetswhere it is their wont to walk.

The respect of one's neighbors is a comforting thingto live with, but it is mostly the little people who earnit and find the pleasure of its warmth. The respect ofthe world is won often by suffering and in the wildand open spaces of the earth. It was on Gethsemaneand not in Bethlehem that Christianity revealed itslight.

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