For a moment, while she looked at the programme, she thought of the
strange complications of feeling that are surely the fruit of an extreme
civilisation. She saw herself caught in a spider's web of apparently
frail, yet really powerful, threads spun by an invisible spider. Her
world was full of gossamer playing the part of iron, of gossamer that was
compelling, that made and kept prisoners. What freedom was there for her
and women like her, what reality of freedom? Even beauty, birth, money
were gossamer to hold the fly. For they concentrated the gaze of those
terrible watchful eyes which govern lives, dominating actions, even
dominating thoughts.
She moved, had always moved, in a maze of complications. She saw them
tiny yet intense, like ants in their hill. They stirred minds, hearts, as
the ants stirred twigs, leaves, blossoms, and carried them to the hill
for their own purposes. In this maze free will was surely lost. The
beautiful woman of the world seems to the world to be a dominant being,
to be imposing the yoke of her will on those around her. But is she
anything but a slave?
Why were she and Miss Schley enemies? Why had they been enemies from the
moment they met? There was perhaps a reason for their hostility now, a
reason in Fritz. But at the beginning what reason had there been?
Civilisation manufactures reasons as the spider manufactures threads,
because it is the deadly enemy of peace--manufactures reasons for all
those thoughts and actions which are destructive of inward and exterior
peace.
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