ensation of her ball, and no doubt that will be the commencement of
your illustrious career. When you are really grown into your pedestal
like one of Rodin's statues, you are certain to have a most illustrious
and distinctive career--and accomplish much good. But you will be
terribly lonely."

"I should not have time. And if I am a born leader, how, pray, could I
yoke comfortably with any man? I should despise a slave, and the same
roof will not shelter two leaders."

"I am not so sure of that, if both were working to the same end. It
takes two halves to make a whole. If women have so far been the
subordinate sex, no doubt it is merely the result of those physical
disabilities which enabled man to gain the ascendency during the long
centuries of struggle with nature. But your sex is rapidly altering all
that. We shall see woman's suffrage in our time--and be better for it. I
have never been opposed to it--and that is proof enough of the progress
the idea has made, for I am arbitrary and masculine enough. Then--now,
no doubt--women will be as much partners as wives, and I grant the
relationship might be vastly more interesting than marriage in the old
style. And I will even concede that it may be the only sort of marriage
for a man of my type--with a pretty woman, of course; hanged if I could
marry the finest woman in the world if she were ugly; and if this be
true--if men really need women enough to make such a concession as I am
making this moment, then I fancy that women will retain enough of their
original generosity to meet our demands."

"You do not need any woman. In England I fancied that your mother meant
a great deal to you, but I don't believe you have missed her at all--or
that you will mourn when she returns to England. I was more than ready
to take her place; you actually stirred my maternal instincts when you
arrived, you looked so forlorn. But you spurned me, and now you have
grown too independent even to illustrate your own theories."

"I did not spurn you. Some day I may tell you why I did not come to you
in my dark hours, but not now."

"Why not now?"

"Because I do not choose to. And seductive as you look I am not to be
made a fool of to gratify one of your whims--of which you are quite as
full as the least emancipated woman I ever saw."

To this Isabel deigned no reply, and a silence ensued. She transferred
her gaze to the fire, and her mind revolved in search of new arguments,
but it was tir