nds on her lap. Guest
glanced at her curiously from his point of vantage in the rear. She was
like no other girl whom he had met, but somewhere, in pictured form, he
must surely have seen such a face, for it struck some sleeping chord of
memory. A fantasy perhaps of some Norse goddess or Flame Deity; a wild,
weird head, painted in reds and whites, with wonderful shaded locks, and
small white face aglow with the fire within. His lips twisted in an
involuntary smile. Could anything be more aggressively unlike "the
sweet m-o-oss rose" of which she had spoken?

"I guess if you go to the root of things, a man's picture of a woman is
cut out to fit into his own niche! If he's very big himself, there's
only a little corner left for her--a nookey little corner where the moss
can grow, but the plant don't have much scope to spread. If he don't
take much stock of himself, he kind-er stands back, and gives her the
front place. Then she gets her chance, and shoots ahead!"

Guest laughed in his turn; an exasperating little laugh, eloquent of an
immense superiority and disdain.

"You speak in an allegory--an allegory of English and American life. I
am quite aware that with you the sexes have reversed positions, that the
man has sunk into a money-making machine, who slaves so that his wife
may spend, while the woman devotes her whole life to dress and
frivolity--"

"Have you ever been in my country?"

Cornelia was brought up short and sharp by an unexpected assent. To
disparage America was an unforgivable offence, and she was prepared to
denounce the judgment of ignorance in words of flame. Her anger was not
abated, but merely turned in another direction, by the discovery that it
was not ignorance, but blindness which she had now to denounce--the
blindness of the obtuse Englishman who had been granted a privilege
which he was incapable of appreciating.

"Some people travel about with such a heap of prejudice as baggage that
they might as well stay at home and be done with it. Englishmen pride
themselves on being conservative, and if they've once gotten an idea
into their heads, it takes more'n they'll ever see with their eyes to
get it out. I guess you spent your time in my country seeing just
exactly what you'd calculated on from the start. It's big enough to
rear all sorts, and enlightened enough to hold 'em!"

"It is certainly very big," assented Guest, in a tone of colourless
civility. Cornelia hated him for