But the silence following the verdict was heavy; the silence contained an unheard thunder.

It was the sound, as when out of Court the public is dissatisfied with a verdict.

Are we expected to commit a social outrage in exposing our whole case to the public ?--Imagine it for a moment as done.

Men are ours at a word--or at least a word of invitation.

Women we woo; fluent smooth versions of our tortures, mixed with permissible courtship, win the individual woman.
And that unreasoning collective woman, icy, deadly, condemns the poor racked wretch who so much as remembers them! She is the enemy of Nature .-- Tell us how?
She is the slave of existing conventions .-- And from what cause?
She is the artificial production of a state that exalts her so long as she sacrifices daily and hourly to the artificial.
Therefore she sides with Mrs.Burman--the foe of Nature: who, with her arts and gold lures, has now possession of the Law (the brass idol worshipped by the collective) to drive Nature into desolation.
He placed himself to the right of Mrs.Burman, for the world to behold the couple: and he lent the world a sigh of disgust.
What he could not do, as in other matters he did, was to rise above the situation, in a splendid survey and rapid view of the means of reversing it.