As to women, they know that the clamour for opportunities for them to become something which they cannot be is as reasonable as if mankind at large started asking for opportunities of winning immortality in this world, in which death is the very condition of life.

You must understand that I am not talking here of material existence.

That naturally is implied; but you won't maintain that a woman who, say, enlisted, for instance (there have been cases) has conquered her place in the world.

She has only got her living in it--which is quite meritorious, but not quite the same thing.
All these reflections which arise from my picking up the thread of Flora de Barral's existence did not, I am certain, present themselves to Mr.
Powell--not the Mr.Powell we know taking solitary week-end cruises in the estuary of the Thames (with mysterious dashes into lonely creeks) but to the young Mr.Powell, the chance second officer of the ship _Ferndale_, commanded (and for the most part owned) by Roderick Anthony, the son of the poet--you know.

A Mr.Powell, much slenderer than our robust friend is now, with the bloom of innocence not quite rubbed off his smooth cheeks, and apt not only to be interested but also to be surprised by the experience life was holding in store for him.