hat he pleased. Now men are going
to do what _we_ please, whether or not it suits them."

"So I've understood," he said, laughing; "but this revolt has been on for
a year and I haven't noticed any men doing what they did not wish to do."

"We have four who are doing it. They are in training for their
honeymoons. You are to be the fifth to begin training," she said coolly.

He laughed again derisively, and lay watching her. She walked up close
beside him and seated herself on the rock marked "Votes for Women."

"I suppose," she said, tauntingly, "that you were rather astonished to
wake up from your fishing nap, and find yourself----" she considered the
effect of her words, gazing at him insolently from under slightly
lowered lashes--"find yourself all balled up in a fish net."

He only grinned at her.

"What are you laughing at?" she demanded, unsmiling.

"Lying here flat on my back, I am smiling at Woman! at every individual
woman on earth! at this ridiculous feminine uprising, this suffragette
revolution--at your National Female Federation Committee; the thousands
of local unions; this strike of your entire sex; this general boycott of
my sex! What has it accomplished?" He tried to wave his hand.

"You parade and make speeches in the streets, throw bricks, slap the
faces of a few State Congressmen, and finally proclaim a general strike
and boycott.

"And what's the result? All social functions and ceremonies are
suspended; caterers, florists, confectioners, cabmen, ruined; theatres,
restaurants, department stores, novelists, milliners, in financial
throes; a falling off of over eighty per cent. in marriages and
births--and you are no nearer a vote than you were before the great
strike paralysed the business of this Republic."

The young lady had been growing pinker and pinker.

"Oh! . . . And is that why you are laughing?" she asked.

"Yes. It's the funniest strike that ever happened to a serious-minded
sex. Because you know your sex, as a sex, is a trifle destitute of a
sense of humour----"

"That expression," she cut in with bitter satisfaction, "definitely
determines _your_ intellectual and social limits, Mr. Langdon. You are
what you appear to be--one of those dreary bothers whose stock phrase is
'a sense of humour'--the kind of young man who has acquired a florid
imitation of cultivation, a sort of near-polish; the type of person who
uses the word 'brainy' for 'capable,' and 'mentality' for 'intellig