according to a plan he had: squeezing out the meat of his mind into the exercise-book, as the moral basis of a great new novel, nothing less. And the truth was that he had no sooner begun the stock-taking process than difficulties appeared, and the present want of ardor made itself felt. Faint doubts and questionings, indeed, knocked at Charles Garrott's mind in these days; not touching Woman, of course, but certainly seeming to touch his last year's formula for her. "I'm an ultra-modern with conservative reactions," he had thought to himself, with a sense of important discovery, but a night or two ago. And on the whole, he felt that that had explained him scientifically into the best company in the world.

Notes on Women

The reference was to the one other existing person who, it was conceded, might possibly know as much about Woman as he, Charles, did. That one was a lady in Sweden. And, reassuringly enough, he had long since noted in the Swedish lady's bold modernism, also, this precise same tendency toward judicious reconsideration.

Suddenly the young man put away his writing, shut his table-drawer with a click, and said:—

"I'm going out for awhile, Judge—to a meeting of the Redmantle Club. Think I need a little stimulus."

He went away to the bedroom, thinking, but not of the Redmantle Club, for which, to say truth, he cared little. Nor were his thoughts in line with the swingeing sentences he had just been writing in the exercise-book. On the contrary, the young authority was openly inquiring of himself: Was economic independence the complete solution of the Unrest? Were there no Values in the world but Utilitarian Values?

The bedroom door shut, and Judge Blenso, who had replied with a mere busy nod to Charles's announcement, desisted from his clacking, and produced a late copy of "The Rider and Driver" from the little drawer of his typewriter-table. He began to look at pictures with a happy expression upon his striking face.

Why was Mr. Blenso called the Judge? An interesting point, on which I, for one, unluckily can shed no light. But if he has also been called a relative and secretary, that was for the sake of peace only. To say outright that this fine large gentleman was Charles Garrott's nephew (his half-nephew, to be exact) would necessitate a vast deal of explanatory genealogy. That was a fact, as the family Bibles of the Blensos and Minters clearly proved, but it is a fact that had better be quietly ceded. 

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