No woman could ride a bicycle along Oxford
Street with any such baggage as that about her.
The woman in grey had a watchful confidence not only in a multitude of
men but in a multitude of things. And it is very hard for any untrained
human being to practise confidence in things in motion--things full of
force, and, what is worse, of forces. Moreover, there is a supreme
difficulty for a mind accustomed to search timorously for some little
place of insignificant rest on any accessible point of stable
equilibrium; and that is the difficulty of holding itself nimbly secure
in an equilibrium that is unstable. Who can deny that women are
generally used to look about for the little stationary repose just
described? Whether in intellectual or in spiritual things, they do not
often live without it.
She, none the less, fled upon unstable equilibrium, escaped upon it,
depended upon it, trusted it, was 'ware of it, was on guard against it,
as she sped amid her crowd her own unstable equilibrium, her machine's,
that of the judgment, the temper, the skill, the perception, the strength
of men and horses.
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