"Conceding that, here's the bit about the nuts. That's where the mistake is, I claim. Let me see—'cracking walnuts with a sort of splendid sadness.' Good gad,—that can't be right, Charles! 'Sober sadness,' 'sorrowful sadness'—something of that sort you meant, eh?"

The secretary had swung about suddenly, revealing a face almost startlingly handsome, fine-cut as a cameo, pink and white as a professional beauty's, and topped with a magnificent crown of snow-white hair.

"'Pathetic sadness,' now, my dear fellow? Go just a little better, wouldn't it?"

"Well—no, Judge, not just in this particular story. Fact is, it's meant to be a little queer, you see."

"It is queer, that's my point!" said the Judge, rather worried. "'Cracking walnuts with a sort of splendid sadness'—if the public understands that!—Well, as you like, of course."

Having thus washed his hands of all responsibility, the relative gazed a moment at a little red "Nothing But Business, Please" sign that hung above his typewriter-table, hummed a bar or two in a sweet tenor voice, and resumed his now expert clacking.

Similarly his employer resumed his composition:—

CONTENTS

Romance left us with the sentimental tradition that a woman's sex was a complete, indeed a glorious, justification of her existence (v. F. Dell: "Women as World Builders"). Because she some day would be, or might possibly be, a mother of children, she was set upon a pedestal and left there, exempt from further responsibilities meanwhile. The potentiality of motherhood became a claim to life-long support in idleness, etc., etc.—

Now, we have long understood that the controlling fact in the life of every man is the way in which he gets his living. We have long understood that the essential immorality is to get something for nothing. But only lately have we come to see how these two general laws apply, have always applied, to women. Only late—

But there the pencil, which had been dragging, came again to a halt.

This writing went forward in an old exercise-book, on the label of which a fine trembling hand had written "French Composition." It was seen that firmer fingers had overwritten that inscription with another: "Notes on Women." Here, in brief, the authority was reducing certain views to essay form, 

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