Vivian Goldstein, 91 years old and the daughter of a suffragette, sat on her couch in the dark until 2 a.m. Wednesday, glued to the television, in tears.

"I was sick over it. I kept hoping it wasn't true," said Mrs. Goldstein, as she watched the political pundits finally write off Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her quest for the nation's highest office -- even as her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, made history as the first African American to win the presidential nomination.

"It's not about him. It's never been about him. It's just that I had waited all my life hoping to see a competent, useful woman make it to the White House, and now I know I will never live to see it," said Mrs. Goldstein, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., resident whose granddaughter, Heather Arnet, heads the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania.

For the true-blue, bedrock believers who supported Mrs. Clinton's candidacy, this historic week in American politics has yielded a bittersweet brew of emotions: anger, grief, pride, a sense of missed opportunity, and, mostly, a sense of finality.

"I guess this week I finally realized there was no hope," said Carol McCullough, 67, of Westwood, who first entered the work force in the 1960s and joined the National Organization for Women in 1971.

Mrs. Clinton's story resonated with Mrs. McCullough, who remembered "a supervisor once telling me, 'women are my best workers,' and I asked him, 'who are the best paid?' and he told me, 'all the men.' Nice."

Mostly, though, she blamed the news media for Mrs. Clinton's defeat.

"They just wouldn't let up. They couldn't stab her enough," she said.

Yesterday, Mrs. Clinton also seemed to close the door on a vice presidential run, disavowing efforts by supporters -- led by Bob Johnson, billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television -- to encourage Mr. Obama to make her his running mate.

"The choice is Sen. Obama's and his alone," said her spokesman, Howard Wolfson.

Still, some wished she hadn't dropped out so quickly.

"I don't think the minute the elections are done you can turn the spigot off, just like that," said Barbara Ernsberger, chairwoman of the Pittsburgh City Democratic Committee,

If anything, Mrs. Clinton should have waited until the August convention, Ms. Ernsberger believes, noting that when she was a delegate for Jerry Brown in 1992, "he was obviously not going to win the presidency, but we weren't released until we got to the convention because he wanted to negotiate platform issues and speaking time," she said.

"People asked me why I wasn't just going to support Bill Clinton, and I said, 'not until I'm released by Jerry Brown. He's the candidate who's brought me to the table.' "

Of course, not all feminists were for Mrs. Clinton. Sara Davis Buss, a Houston Harbaugh attorney who has long decried the lack of women on local boards and political commissions, admitted to mixed feelings about Mrs. Clinton's candidacy.

"I was an Obama supporter and an early one. But it broke my heart in a lot of ways not to be supporting Hillary Clinton because here was a woman I respect, who's really smart, who's qualified to be president of the United States," she said. "Who is the next woman in the wings who we can hope will attain that kind of stature?"

Heather Arnet believes the spectacle of Mrs. Clinton winning the last few primaries by huge margins, while being deserted in droves by superdelegates, sends a mixed message to women and girls.

"Plus we saw sexist language being used to describe her, from the mainstream media to the Internet," Ms. Arnet said, stressing she was speaking for herself and not as head of the Women and Girls Foundation.

"It's just a reminder we've got a lot of work to do regarding gender equity in this country."

Ms. Arnet's grandmother says she may not live to see another woman run for president, but she will always remember the speech Mrs. Clinton gave Tuesday night, personifying everything her own mother, Mary Rosenberg -- the suffragette who marched in the streets of New York in 1917 -- taught her about being a woman.

"Hillary Clinton personifies everything a woman should be," Mrs. Goldstein said firmly. "She has expressed so many things that I, and my mother, may she rest in peace, stood for.

"Of course," Mrs. Goldstein added, "I'm still feeling disenfranchised and I'm furious with the Democratic Party for the way they handled the Florida delegation, giving them each half a vote, for Pete's sake.

"I'm not half a person. And I'm a big mouth, and I'm angry. So there."