iming in, "isn't it just as
proper that women should see women dance and throw somersaults on the
stage as that men should see them? And then, you know, women are such a
restraining influence."

"I hadn't thought of that," said Jack. "I thought the Conventional
was for the benefit of the audience, not for the salvation of the
performers."

"It's both. It's life. Don't you think women ought to know life? How are
they to take their place in the world unless they know life as men know
it?"

"I'm sure I don't know whose place they are to take, the serpentine
dancer's or mine," said Jack, as if he were studying a problem. "How
does your experiment get on, Miss Tavish?"

Carmen looked up quickly.

"Oh, I haven't any experiment," said Miss Tavish, shaking her head.
"It's just Mr. Delancy's nonsense."

"I wish I had an experiment. There is so little for women to do. I wish
I knew what was right." And Carmen looked mournfully demure, as if life,
after all, were a serious thing with her.

"Whatever Mrs. Henderson does is sure to be right," said Jack,
gallantly.

Carmen shot at him a quick sympathetic glance, tempered by a grateful
smile. "There are so many points of view."

Jack felt the force of the remark as he did the revealing glance. And he
had a swift vision of Miss Tavish leading him a serpentine dance, and of
Carmen sweetly beckoning him to a pleasant point of view. After all it
doesn't much matter. Everything is in the point of view.

After dinner and cigars and cigarettes in the library, the talk dragged
a little in duets. The dinner had been charming, the house was lovely,
the company was most agreeable. All said that. It had been so somewhere
else the night before that, and would be the next night. And the ennui
of it all! No one expressed it, but Henderson could not help looking it,
and Carmen saw it. That charming hostess had been devoting herself to
Edith since dinner. She was so full of sympathy with the East-Side work,
asked a hundred questions about it, and declared that she must take it
up again. She would order a cage of canaries from that poor German for
her kitchen. It was such a beautiful idea. But Edith did not believe in
her one bit. She told Jack afterwards that "Mrs. Henderson cares no more
for the poor of New York than she does for--"

"Henderson?" suggested Jack.

"Oh, I don't know anything about that. Henderson has only one idea--to
get the better of everybody, and be the money king o