ll that a thing needed
saying; skill came in knowing how to wait to say it. At Lady Derl's
dinner Leighton had decided to go away for several months. He had
something to say to Lewis before he went, but he passed nervous days
waiting to say it. Then came the propitious moment. They were sitting
alone over a cheerful small fire that played a sort of joyful
accompaniment to the outdoor struggle of spring against the cold.

"In every society," said Leighton, breaking a long silence, "where women
have been numerically predominant, the popular conception of morality
has been lowered. Your historical limitations are such that you'll have
to take my say-so for the truth of that generality."

"Yes, sir," said Lewis.

"Man's greatest illusion in regard to woman," continued Leighton, "is
that she's fastidious. Men are fastidious and vulgar; women are neither
fastidious nor vulgar. There's a reason. Women have been too intimately
connected through the ages with the slops of life to be fastidious.
That's driven them to look upon natural things with natural eyes. They
know that vulgarity isn't necessary, and they revolt from it. These are
all generalities, of course."

"Yes, sir," said Lewis.

"Women are very wonderful. They are an unconscious incarnation of
knowledge. Knowledge bears the same relation to the wise that liquor
does to the man who decided the world would be better without alcohol
and started to drink it all up. Man's premier temptation is to drink up
women. Lots of men start to do it, but that's as far as they get. One
woman can absorb a dozen men; a dozen men can't absorb one woman.
Women--any one woman--is without end. Am I boring you?"

"No, sir," said Lewis. "You are giving me a perspective."

"You've struck the exact word. Since we met, I've given you several of
my seven lives, but there's one life a man can't pass on to his son--his
life with relation to women. He can only give, as you said, a
perspective."

Leighton chose a cigar carefully and lit it.

"Formerly woman had but one mission," he went on. "She arrived at it
when she arrived at womanhood. The fashionable age for marriage was
fifteen. Civilization has pushed it along to twenty-five. Those ten
cumulative years have put a terrific strain on woman. On the whole, she
has stood it remarkably well. But as modernity has reduced our
animalism, it has increased our fundamental immorality and put a
substantial blot on woman's mission as a mission. W