ng the higher life of the
members of the group. It would be quite practicable, even in our
present crude civilization, to arrange such groups. But of course that
would be a temporary expedient. In the redeemed form of social life,
it will not be necessary."

"What ails you, Clarissa? Did that lecture you delivered before the
Saturday Afternoon Club go to your head?"

Clarissa flushed. Her club paper on "After the Home--What?" was a
sensitive subject. She already had been chaffed a good deal about it.

"Of course I know," she said with dignity, "that I am not a genius. I
can't organize. I can't write. I'm not pretending to be in the class
with Ibsen or Olive Schreiner or Sonia Kovalevsky! No, nor with the
American women who are going to work {139} out their ideas. I don't
believe I'd make a good social worker, either. I have n't enough
patience and tenderness. But I _can_ talk. You know I can talk, Paul."

Yes, he knew it. To his cost, he knew it. She had the gift of fluent,
winning speech, speech with an atmosphere, a charm. Uncouth theories
acquired grace on her lips, and plausible theories seemed stronger
than they were. She ironed shirt-waists badly, and the starch stuck to
the irons, but she could make the worse appear the better reason with
deftness and dispatch. Somewhere, somehow, a coal from the sacred fire
had touched her lips. You might be indignant, outraged, at her
theories, but you never refused to listen while she set them forth.

"I figure it this way," she continued. {140} "In all great causes, the
people who can think and write need the help of the people who can
talk, to disseminate their ideas, to popularize them, to get them
brought home to the people who don't think and don't read, and yet
have influence. That shall be my _metier_. I can do it. I can do it
well. I will do it for a living wage and put my heart and soul into
doing it. Without going outside a very narrow field,--say, that of
parlor talks,--I can yet be a promoter of great causes. I will be a
walking-delegate from the Union of the Elect! I will fight the good
fight for Utopia! Why, Paul, I can make it glorious!"

Her face shone with a wonderful light. Her slender, delicately rounded
figure vibrated with enthusiasm. She did not see the expression on her
husband's face. When great thoughts were {141} astir in Clarissa s
brain, her high imperturbability, her bright serenity, were maddening.
To assail them, logic was as useless as pas