iquant the contrast between woman inside and outside her
office hours! As you take her out to dinner, and watch her there seated
before you, a perfumed radiance, a dewy dazzling vision, an evening star
swathed in gauzy convolutions of silk and lace--can it be the same
creature who an hour or two ago sat primly with notebook and pencil at
your desk side, and took down your specification for fireproofing that
new steel-constructed building on Broadway? You, except for your evening
clothes, are not changed; but she--well, your clients couldn't possibly
recognize her. As with Browning's lover, you are on the other side of
the moon, "side unseen" of office boy or of subway throng; you are in
the presence of those "silent silver lights and darks undreamed of" by
the gross members of your board of directors. By day--but ah! at evening
under the electric lights, to the delicate strains of the palm-shaded
orchestra! Man is incapable of these exquisite transformations. By day a
gruff and hurried machine--at evening, at best, a rapt and laconic poker
player. A change with no suggestion of the miraculous.

Do not let us for a moment imagine that because man is ceasing to remove
his hat at her entrance into crowded elevators, or because he hustles
her or allows her to hang by the straps in crowded cars, that he is
tending to forget this supernaturalism of woman. Such change in his
manners merely means his respect for her disguise, her disguise as a
business woman. By day she desires to be regarded as just that, and she
resents as untimely the recognition of her sex, her mystery, and her
marvel during business hours. Man's apparent impoliteness, therefore, is
actually a delicate modern form of chivalry. But of course his real
feelings are only respectfully masked, and, let her be in any danger or
real discomfort, or let any language be uttered unseemly for her ears,
and we know what promptly happens. Barring such accidents, man tacitly
understands that her incognito is to be respected--till the charming
moment comes when she chooses to put it aside and take at his hands her
immemorial tribute.

So, you see, she is able to go about the rough ways, taking part even in
the rough work of the world, literally bearing what the fairy tales call
a charmed life. And this, of course, gives her no small advantage in the
human conflict. So protected, she is enabled, when need arises, to take
the offensive, with a minimum of danger. Consider her