f the National
Federation of Independent Women of America."

"Is this a private enterprise of yours," he asked curiously, "or just
a--a playful impulse, or the militant fruition of a vast and feminine
conspiracy?"

She smiled slightly.

"I suppose you mean to be impertinent, but I shall not evade answering
you, Captain Jones. I am acting under orders."

"Betty's?" he inquired, flippantly.

"The orders of Professor Elizabeth Challis," she said, with heightened
colour.

"Exactly. It _is_ a conspiracy, then, complicated by riot, assault,
disorderly conduct, and highway robbery--isn't it?"

"You may call it what you choose."

"Oh, I'll leave that to the courts."

She said disdainfully: "We recognize no laws in the making of which we
have had no part."

"There's no use in discussing that," said the Governor blandly; "but I'd
like to know what you suffragettes find so distasteful in that proposed
bill which the Mayor and--and the Governor of New York have had drafted."

"It is reactionary--a miserable subterfuge--a treacherous attempt to
return to the old order of things! A conspiracy to re-shackle, re-enslave
American womanhood with the sordid chains of domestic cares! To drive her
back into the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery--back into the dark ages
of dependence and acquiescence and non-resistance--back into the degraded
epochs of sentimental relations with the tyrant man!"

She leaned forward in her excitement and her sable boa slid back as she
made a gesture with her expensive muff.

"Once," she said, "woman was so ignorant that she married for love! Now
the national revolt has come. Neither sentiment nor impulse nor emotion
shall ever again play any part in our relations with man!"

He said, trying to speak ironically: "That's a gay outlook, isn't it?"

"The outlook, Captain Jones, is straight into a glorious millennium.
Marriage, in the future, is to mean the regeneration of the human race
through cold-blooded selection in mating. Only the physically and
mentally perfect will hereafter be selected as specimens for scientific
propagation. All others must remain unmated--_pro bono publico_--and so
ultimately human imperfection shall utterly disappear from this world!"

Her pretty enthusiasm, her earnestness, the delicious colour in her
cheeks, began to fascinate him. Then uneasiness returned.

"Do you know," he said cautiously, "that the Governor of New York has
received anonymous letters informin