on when
mother does. I--I _am_ busy, you know."

"Please! And we can have one of our good old chats."

"Yes," and then mischievously, "but you'd better ask Marcia first,
don't you think?"

His gaze fell and he reddened.

"I--I don't quite see what Marcia's got to do with it," he muttered.

"Oh, _don't_ you?"

"No."

She smiled and then with a really serious air:

"Well, I do. I'm sorry I intruded, Jerry. I wouldn't have come for the
world if I had known--"

"What nonsense you do talk. Promise me you'll come, Una."

"Ask Marcia first."

He laughed uneasily. "What a tease you are!"

"You ought to be very much flattered."

"How?"

"To be worth teasing."

Here they moved slightly away, turning their backs toward me and
unfortunately I could hear no more. And so I sat listening to the
group around Marcia, who was again enthroned at the tea-table.

I had not met the men, but they were of the usual man-about-town type,
"Marcia's ex-es" somebody, I think the mannish Carew girl, amusingly
called them. Among them Arthur Colton, married only a year, who
already boasted that he was living "the simple double life." Besides
the Laidlaws there were the Walsenberg woman, twice a grass widow and
still hopeful, and the Da Costa debutante who looked as though butter
wouldn't melt in her mouth, giggled constantly and said things which
she fondly hoped to be devilish, but which were only absurd. This was
the girl, I think, whom Jerry had described as having only five
adjectives, all of which she used every minute. Channing Lloyd, a
glass of champagne at his elbow, laughed gruffly and filled the room
with tobacco smoke. I listened. Small talk, banalities, bits of narrow
glimpses of narrow pursuits. I had to admit that Marcia quite
dominated this circle, and I understood why. Shallow as she was, she
was the only one with the possible exception of Phil Laidlaw who gave
any evidence of having done any thinking at all. I might have known as
I listened that her conversation had a purpose.

"I claim that obedience to the will of man," Marcia was saying, "has
robbed woman of all initiative, all incentive to achievement, all
creative faculty, and that only by renouncing man and all his works
will she ever be his equal."

"Why don't you renounce 'em then, Marcia?" roared Lloyd, amid
laughter.

"I know at least one that I could renounce,' said Marcia, smiling as
she lighted a cigarette.

"Me? You couldn't," he returned. "Y