_ women,' amended Hermione, softly.

'There are more and more every day who are not content,' he said
sternly; then, for an instant unbending and craning a little forward,
'Of course I don't mean you--_you_ are exceptions--but of women in the
mass! Look at them! They force their way into men's work, they crowd
into the universities--yes, yes' (in vain Hermione tried to reassure him
by 'exceptions')--'Beauty is nothing to them! They fling aside their
delicate, provocative draperies, they cast off their scented sandals.
They pull on brown boots and bicycling skirts! They put man's yoke of
hard linen round their ivory throats, and they scramble off their
jewelled thrones to mount the rostrum and the omnibus!'

'Why? _Why_ do they?' Vida demanded, laughing. 'Nobody ever tells me
why. I can't believe they're as unselfish as _you_ make out.'

'I!'

'You ought to admire them if they voluntarily give up all those
beautiful things--knowing beforehand they'll only win men's scorn. For
you've always warned them!'

He didn't even hear. 'Ah, Ladies, Ladies!' half laughing, but really
very much in earnest, he apostrophized the peccant sex, 'I should like
to ask, are we men to look upon our homes as dusty din-filled camps on
the field of battle, or as holy temples of Peace? Ah!' He leaned back in
his corner, stretched out his long legs, and thrust his restless hands
in his pockets. 'If they knew!'

'Women?' asked Hermione, with the air of one painstakingly brushing up
crumbs of wisdom.

Paul Filey nodded.

'Knew----?'

'They would see that in the ugly scramble they had let fall their
crowns! If they only knew,' he repeated, 'they would go back to their
thrones, and, with the sceptre of beauty in one hand and the orb of
purity in the other, they would teach men to worship them again.'

'And then?' said Miss Levering.

'Then? Why, men will fall on their knees before them.' As Miss Levering
made no rejoinder, 'What greater victory do women want?' he demanded.

For the first time Miss Levering bent her head forward slightly as
though to see how far he was conscious of the fatuity of his climax. But
his flushed face showed a childlike good faith.

'Eh? Will any one tell me what they _want_?'

'Since you need to ask,' said the gently smiling woman in the corner,
'perhaps there's more need to show than I'd quite realized.'

'I don't think you quite followed,' he began, with an air of
forbearance. 'What I mean is----'

Mi