ptuous answer. "You want the
conventional, old-time wife, the sort that is always standing ready and
waiting to swear that her husband is right, even when her instinct, her
brain, her heart, all cry out to her that he is wrong. Well, Charles, I
am not that sort of wife, nor ever will be. The real root of the trouble
is that we women are changing, developing, while you men are not: you
are the same. We, as a sex, are growing up, at last; your sex is
standing still. The ideas our grandmothers held, the lives they led,
would kill us of dry rot. But you men are just where your grandfathers
were in relation to your homes and your beliefs as to the duty of your
wives. Of course, your old-time wife looked up to her over-lord with
reverence; she hung on his every word with profound respect; she swore
by his every careless opinion, without ever daring to call her soul or
her mind her own. For that matter, why shouldn't she have done so? He
was educated, after some sort of fashion at least; and he went abroad
into the world, where he mixed with his fellows, where he did things,
good or bad; while she, poor, pretty, ignorant doll, snatched up by him
in early girlhood, and afterward kept sequestered, forced to assume the
tragic responsibilities of a wife and mother before she was old enough
to appreciate her difficult position--what chance did she have? Now,
to-day, I tell you, it is all different. We're as well educated as you
men--better, oftentimes. We have discovered that we can think
intelligently; we do think. We, too, go abroad into the world; we, too,
do things. Best of all, we see with a new, clearer vision. And we see
certain things that you men have become blinded to through centuries of
usage, of selfish, careless struggling for your own ends. We are able to
see with the distinctness of truth the right relation of the man and the
woman--an equal relation, with equal rights for each, with equal claims
on each other, with equal duties to each other in the home and in the
world outside the home--partners, held together by love."

"My dear," Hamilton remarked dryly, as his wife paused, "you have
omitted one salient qualification of the modern woman: she is,
preeminently an orator. Why, you, yourself, are a feminine
Demosthenes--nothing less." But he abandoned, his tone of raillery, as
he continued: "And so, what you've been doing--that's your idea of
partnership, is it?"

"Yes," Cicily declared, spiritedly. "When one partn