ou've tried, you know, but you've
got to admit that I'm positively in'spensible to you."

"Do be quiet, Chan. You're idiotic. I'm quite serious."

"You're always serious, but you never mean what you say."

"Oh, don't I?"

"No," he grunted over his glass.

She glanced at him for a moment and their eyes met, hers falling
first. Then she turned away. I think that the man's attraction for her
was nothing less than his sheer bestiality.

"I believe in a splendid unconventional morality," she went on, musing
with half-closed eyes over the ash of her cigarette. "After awhile you
men will understand what it means."

"Not I," said Lloyd, who was drinking more than he needed. "If you say
that immorality is conventional I'll agree with you, my dear, but
morality--" and he drank some champagne, "morality! what rot!"

The others laughed, I'll admit, more at, than with him. But the
conversation was sickening enough. I saw Jerry and Una shake hands and
come forward and Marcia immediately turned toward them. The end of the
battle was not yet, for as Una nodded in the general direction of the
group in passing, Marcia spoke her name.

"Ah, Una dear. You're going?"

"I must," with a glance at her wrist watch. "It's getting late."

"What a pity. I wanted to talk to you--about the Mission."

"I'd like to, but--"

"We've just been discussing a theme that I know you're really vitally
interested in."

"I?" I could see by the sudden lift of her brows that Una was now on
her guard.

"Yes. You believe in women working, in woman's independence, in the
New-Thought idea of unconventional morality, don't you?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Simply that women are or should be perfectly capable of looking out
for themselves, as much so as men?"

"That depends a great deal upon the woman, I should say," replied Una,
smiling tolerantly.

"I was just about to put a hypothetical question. Do you mind
listening? A young girl, for instance, pretty, romantic, a trifle
venturesome, weary of the banalities of existence, leaves all the
tiresome cares of the city and with the wanderlust upon her goes
faring forth in search of adventure. A purely hypothetical case, but a
typical one. As she wanders through the woods, she comes upon a high
stone wall, something like this one of Jerry's, and suddenly remembers
that within this wall there lives a young man, beautiful beyond the
dreams of the gods. I have said that she is romantic, also
ven