of the harmless
obsessed in which Hampton abounded.

"Relations!" Eda exclaimed.

"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at
first he had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion,
"we're all descended from them." His gesture triumphantly indicated the
denizens of the cage.

"What are you giving us?" said Eda.

"Ain't you never read Darwin?" he demanded. "If you had, you'd know
they're our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and
Eve. That there's a fable."

"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her
disgust.

But Janet laughed. "What's the difference? Some of us aren't any better
than monkeys, anyway."

"That's so," said the man approvingly. "That's so." He wanted to
continue the conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly. And
when, from the entrance to the performance tent, they glanced back over
their shoulders, he was still gazing at his cousins behind the bars,
seemingly deriving an acute pleasure from his consciousness of the
connection....

CHAPTER VI

Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves,
for the playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full
of interesting and dramatic situations, and in it may be studied,
undoubtedly, one phase of the evolution tending to transform if not
disintegrate certain institutions hitherto the corner-stones of
society. Our stage is set. A young woman, conscious of ability, owes her
promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine qualities with which she
is endowed. And though she may make an elaborate pretense of ignoring
the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at the same time,
paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and
inspiring thrill of power! On its face it is a business arrangement;
secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with
the colours of high adventure. When Janet entered into the intimate
relationship with Mr. Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties
as his private stenographer her attitude, slightly defiant, was the
irreproachable one of a strict attention to duty. All unconsciously she
was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and probably a feminist
at heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined by no
preconceived or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like.
For feminism, in a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and
sex attract