ell?"

"Eventually some of us survive and some do not--which is another
story! Those of us who do, who endure such days that we may go to
night school, and who wear mended gloves and queer hats, forgoing the
cheap joys of our associates--we do forge ahead and grow grimmer of
heart and graver of soul. We realize that we are earning everything we
are getting--perhaps more--only we cannot get the recognition we
deserve. We are quite different from what you stay-at-home women
fancy. Tempting chiffon frocks and love affairs de luxe with handsome
junior partners are farthest from our thoughts. We plan for lonely old
age--a home and an annuity, a trip to Europe or some other Carcassonne
of our thwarted selves. We revel in things as you women do--but we
revel in them because people are shut away from us. You women shut
away people that you may revel in things.

"All this time the handsome junior partners and so on for whom we keep
business house and through propinquity are supposed to love--they have
fallen in love with sheltered girls such as your own self, and
everything is quite as it ought to be. Now do you really think the
capable business women of to-day are letting their abilities be spent
in useless rebellion against their fate and loving the members of the
firm in Victorian fashion or doing their work intelligently and
earning their wage? I hardly think there is room for an argument. You
must understand that the years of errand girl, night school, underpaid
clerk have taken out of us a certain capacity for enjoyment which you
women have had emphasized. But thank God it has also taken from us a
capacity for hysterical suffering, for going on the rocks when we see
some joy we crave yet know can never be ours!"

"Oh!" Beatrice murmured, wishing Steve would come in or else Mary be
called to the telephone. "Oh----"

"But I do think there is a certain justice developed among modern
business women which home women do not comprehend as a rule. Oh, not
that I underestimate the home women or the sheltered women. There is a
distinction between the two--but I say that the business woman who
earns a man's wage and does his work has a certain squareness, for
want of a better term, which makes her say, 'If I earn something it is
mine and I shall not hesitate thus to label it. Look out--any one who
tries to take it from me!' Do you see?"

Mary paused, annoyed at what she had been prevailed upon to say, and
wondering if by good f