ontests for "purses." It was worth, in those days, a bank
clerk's position or an undergraduate's degree ever to be seen there.

It may be imagined with what terror--a terror even transmuting itself
to pity dictating a refusal on Mercedes' part--old Jamie heard of a
proposition, one holiday, that David should take his wife there.
Mercedes would not go; and St. Clair laughed at her, in private, and
went alone. She was forced to be the accomplice of his going.

The fact is, St. Clair, from the tip of his mustache to his
patent-leather shoes, was bored with regular hours, respectability,
and the assurance of an income adequate to his ordinary spending.
Something must be done for joy of life. He gave a champagne supper to
his old cronies, at a tavern by the wayside, and bore their chaff.
Then he bet. Then he stayed away from home a day or two.

A butterfly cares but for sunshine. His love for Mercedes was quite
animal; he cared nothing for her mind; all poor Jamie's expensive
schooling was wasted, more unappreciated by him than it would have
been by John Hughson. So, one day, St. Clair came home to find her
crying; and his love for her then ended.

V.

Mercedes, remember, lived in the earlier half of this strange century,
now so soon to go to judgment. In these last years, when women seek
men's rights in exchange for woman's reason, reactionary males have
criticised them as children swapping old lamps for new, fine
instruments for coarser toys. As a poet has put it, why does

"a woman
Dowered by God with power of life or death
Now cry for coarser tools,"

and seek to exchange the ballot for Prospero's wand? Like other
savages, she would exchange fine gold for guns and hatchets. (Beads,
trinkets, the men might pardon them!)

A woman of power once said she had rather reign than govern. But
reigns, with male St. Clairs, so soon are over! Mercedes' dynasty had
ended. She knew it before St. Clair was conscious of it, and poor
Jamie knew it when she did.

It was his custom to stay late at the bank, after hours. It closed at
two o'clock; and in those days all merchants then went home to their
dinner. Jamie, unknown to the cashier, would assume what he could of
St. Clair's work, to get him home the sooner to Mercedes. It is to be
hoped he always went there.

As one looks back on the days of great events, one wonders that the
morning of them was not consciously brightened or