She said there could be no love without respect, and she would only despise a man who could content himself with a thing like her.

Love, she said, was a woman's first necessity: love being forfeited; there was but one thing left that could give a passing zest to a wasted life, and that was fame, admiration, the applause of the multitude.
And so her resolution was taken.

She would turn to that final resort of the disappointed of her sex, the lecture platform.

She would array herself in fine attire, she would adorn herself with jewels, and stand in her isolated magnificence before massed, audiences and enchant them with her eloquence and amaze them with her unapproachable beauty.

She would move from city to city like a queen of romance, leaving marveling multitudes behind her and impatient multitudes awaiting her coming.
Her life, during one hour of each day, upon the platform, would be a rapturous intoxication--and when the curtain fell; and the lights were out, and the people gone, to nestle in their homes and forget her, she would find in sleep oblivion of her homelessness, if she could, if not she would brave out the night in solitude and wait for the next day's hour of ecstasy.
So, to take up life and begin again was no great evil.