world, the flesh and the devil. It is
only a difference of terminology. Poet, artist, priest and anchorite
alike thought all the time of the tyranny of the body until it became a
million-horse-power steam hammer crushing out his microscopic pin-head
of a soul. To man, woman is still the siren tradition made her; she
likes to be. She likes to think hers is 'the face that launched a
thousand ships and fired the topless towers of Ilium.' She insists that
man shall set out on his high adventure in quest of her. But he is
beginning to see through her. He has her fate in the test-tube of his
scientific laboratories to-day. She has refused to join him as a comrade
in armour; she has preferred to remain the vehicle of reproduction, the
prize of his play-times, his allurement, his passenger. Then let her
remain so. Man is going to keep her under. Think what has been done in
plastic surgery, what is being done in what I call plastic psychology!
Think what selection has done in the breeding of lower forms of life.
And then let woman tremble! If she is perpetually going to chain man in
the meshes of her hair, the curves of her fingers, he is going to get
rid of her--except as a thing for pleasure and for use. Most of the time
he hugs his chains. One day he will get clear vision, realize that woman
has got too much for him and--limit her! It is, to some extent, being
done unconsciously already. Why is it a disgrace to be the mother of a
girl-child in certain Oriental countries? Why do they drown girl-babies
in the Ganges? It is simply that they realize the danger of this
softness, this overlordship of women! Clearer thinking than we, they see
the menace of femininity. We of the West will soon see that woman has
been the passenger in the rather frail life-boat of the world. And in
self defence we shall put her overboard before long--unless--unless--she
takes an oar."_

"Lord, he _does_ lap into them, doesn't he?" said Louis, gleefully.

She frowned and pondered.

"I think you are ungenerous, all of you," she said softly. "Men seem
such unbalanced children to me. Wanting to put women overboard."

She looked at Louis, and they both broke into an uncontrollable fit of
laughter as they recalled that that was exactly what she had literally
done with an annoying man.

"Perhaps we're all ungenerous," she said presently. "I believe we are
ungenerous towards the thing that chains us. It's only natural. But I
don't think that you or the