walking by, across the sunny street, and Mary, having greeted them much too pleasantly to suit his taste, said:—

"Do you know this is the third time I've seen those two together lately? It begins to look like an affair."

"What!" he cried, disgusted. "Why!—why, she'd bite his head off in a week!"

And then, while she protested argumentatively, he was silent for a space, struck with the thought that here was an opening not unsuited to his need.

While the plan for his new work was by no means settled yet, beyond doubt this matter of Miss Trevenna had given strong impetus to the conservative wave. And meanwhile, there was the personal side. To lecture Mary Wing openly was a thing scarcely to be thought of. Yet, having felt the unmistakable reactions himself, the young man found himself itching, literally itching, to get his hands on Mary and make her react a little, too.

He said in his pleasantest way:—"Did it ever strike you, by the way, that she's got the propaganda in the purely archaic form?"

"Archaic?—Hodger!"

"She still imagines that the object of this Movement is to make women more like men. Of course, the object of the Movement is to make women more like themselves."

Her silence seemed to applaud his epigram. Charles felt that it was generous of him to add: "I bagged that somewhere. Sounds like Havelock Ellis to me. But," he added, frankly, "I've improved the wording. Why do you say I'm unjust to her? On the contrary, I'd be delighted to fork over all those rights of hers she was demanding the other night. By the by, what are Hodger's rights exactly?"

"I suppose she's entitled to human rights, even if you, as a man, don't find her especially attractive."

Charles winced, and then smiled faintly.

"Human rights—security and protection, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? She's got them, hasn't she? I thought what Hodger was yelling for was special privileges, rather exceptional privileges in the way of freeing her Ego from—"

"As a woman, she hasn't even all the human rights, you know very well. As a human being, she would feel that she's entitled to exceptional rights, because she's an exceptional being. She would take the ground that her public work—"

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