one
of you again!"

That wail of protest was not without its effect. There came a chorus of
ejaculations; but the monologues had been efficiently interrupted, and
the attention of the garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding
officer. For a moment, silence fell. It was broken by Ruth Howard, a
girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness,
who uttered her plaint in a tone of exceeding bitterness:

"And we came together in love!"

At that, Cicily Hamilton forgot her petulance over the tumult, and
smiled with the sweetness that was characteristic of her.

"Really, you know," she confessed, almost contritely, "I don't like to
lecture you in my own house; but we came together for a serious
purpose, and you are just as rude as if you'd merely come to tea."

One of the women in the front row of chairs uttered a crisp cry of
approval. This was Mrs. Flynn, a visiting militant suffragette from
England. Her aggressive manner and the eager expression of her narrow
face with the gleaming black eyes declared that this woman of forty was
by nature a fighter who delighted in the fray.

"Yes; Mrs. Hamilton is right," was her caustic comment. "We are
forgetting our great work--the emancipation of woman!"

Cicily beamed approval on the speaker; but she inverted the other's
phrase:

"Yes," she agreed, "our great work--the subjugation of man!"

The statement was not, however, allowed to go unchallenged. Helen
Johnson, who was well along in the twenties at least, and still a
spinster, prided herself on her powers of conquest, despite the fact
that she had no husband to show for it. So, now, she spoke with an air
of languid superiority:

"Oh, we've already accomplished the subjugation of man," she drawled,
and smiled complacently.

"Some of us have," Cicily retorted; and the accent on the first word
pointed the allusion.

"Oh, hush, dear!" The chiding whisper came from Mrs. Delancy, a
gray-haired woman of sixty-five, somewhat inclined to stoutness and
having a handsome, kindly face. She was the aunt of Cicily, and had
reared the motherless girl in her New York home. Now, on a visit to her
niece, the bride of a year, she found herself inevitably involved in the
somewhat turbulent session of the Civitas Club, with which as yet she
enjoyed no great amount of sympathy. Her position in the chair nearest
the presiding officer gave her opportunity to voice the rebuke without
being overheard by anyon