It was her last day. She looked round the old room with an interest it had never had for her before. The distempered walls were lofty and very dusty, and the packets on the high shelves were wreathed in cobwebs. Several calendars hung on nailssome of former years; even the last showed the wrong day of the month. There was the big steel grate and snowwhite hearth that took the charwoman an hour each morning to clean, and the old rug in front of it with the holes and the torn fringe where people's feet tripped as they walked across; her No 2 Remington; the letterpress with its damp-smelling book of smudgy copies; the great iron safe standing ajar with the brown tea-pot and cups inside and the cloth hanging on the door to dry.

She stood up, and slowly put on her hat, pushing the curls in behind an elastic band. Her galoshes came next, and then a waterproof, and fabric gloves most neatly darned. With an umbrella and a shabby attaché case that smelled of sandwiches, she made a poor, pathetic figure that indeed seemed part of that dull, lifeless room. 'Good-bye,' said Dolores; and the door banged behind her.

Exchange. Two can play at that game, old Sweet. Get busy now. Central 1410.'

-

Dolores sat at a desk in the middle of the room. In front of her was the very latest and best of typewriters; by her side hung a dictaphone. It was simply impossible for her to concentrate on her work: she sat with wide-open eyes listening in amazement to her colleagues in the new office Joan Gregory and Lieutenant Peter Partridge. During the three weeks Dolores had been there, the chatter of this astounding pair had never ceased, except when one of them was out, or when the Chief or a client came into the room. The mysterious part of it was that they got through their work, while Dolores simply sat gaping. And when they passed from repartee into discussion, Dolores found her interest as great an obstacle to work as her wonder had been. Sometimes they spoke to her; sometimes they ignored her altogether; but they were polite and kind in helping her, and certainly she was never dull.

-

'I've got more respect for my tongue. I can't have it laid up for weeks.'

panting, and more than a little frightened.

'What's up with Dolores?' said Peter in a whisper to Joan, who was

for us!'

'I could n't book-keep here, then.' 'You don't book-keep with your tongue, do you? Unless you lick the blots. Besides, it's like your swank to call doing simple tots book-keeping.' 'It's one of the minor tragedies of life that I cannot retort.'

'Oh, well, I've got to 'phone Barrington for the Chief. Come on,

table. 'Hullo, Miss Allardyce! What's happened??

Dolores explained, adding that it was dreadful to see these men behaving so coarsely when one had thought of them as heroes.

"They did n't worry you, did they?' asked the lieutenant quickly.

'No,' said Dolores. 'I ran away. But there were girls there waiting for

'I suppose it is pretty thick sometimes,' Peter began, but Joan, her black eyes shining as she spoke, faced him hotly.

'Of course, I'm a woman,' she cried Dolores looked at the slight, girlish figure and bobbed hair- 'but I do reckon to know something about men. It makes me sick to hear canting talk about the boys coming home rowdy.' She turned on him. 'You ought to know better. You were out there, too. Their hearts are starved. They got food, of course; but their hearts have been hungry for years. They all wanted their mothers, their sweethearts, or their wives. Men are such babies, really. They are like little lost kiddies. You could take them in your arms and kiss them, and they'd just feel comforted and forget they were lonely.'

Dolores gasped. She did not raise her eyes, but strained not to miss a word.

'My gum!' ejaculated Peter, his face glowing with pride and admiration. Then suddenly, twisting up his mouth, he remarked: 'I always said you were no lady.'

'I never said I was,' retorted Joan. 'And, anyway, it's time for the nosebag, old lad.'

'My dear! Was that Dolores in the Strand?' asked Joan, as she and Peter turned into the Corner House for an early supper; they did that sometimes on their way home.

'Yes. I expect this is the spree you advised,' answered Peter.

Half an hour later, as they passed across the foyer, she was standing inside near the door looking cold and tired. She did not see them, for her eyes were on the couples moving to and fro at the entrance.

'You must go and speak to her, Pete,' said Joan.

'Why can't you come too?' 'I've had a brain-wave; I believe I know what she's come for.'

Dolores started and flushed when Peter spoke to her.

'Miss Allardyce, are you here alone? Can I do anything for you?'

'No, thank you,' she said very nervously. 'I-I-shall be going soon.'

'Well, can I call a taxi?'

'Oh, no. I shall be all right.'

'Look here, you know--' Peter bent down and put his hand on her arm. 'You won't mind me saying this, Miss Allardyce, but-wellyou know-ladies don't stand about by themselves in the evening here. Some of these chaps might think you'd speak to them

She raised two startled eyes to him. "That was what I wanted,' she said. 'But they did n't.'

Peter was dumbfounded; he could think of nothing to say. But Dolores continued.

'You'll think me very silly,' she said, 'and perhaps wrong. I came down here to watch the men arrive home, but I got jostled about in the street, so I slipped in here. They have been so lonely out there, and they have done so much for us: I did so want to give a welcome.' She gave a little laugh, and went on. 'I brought half-a-crown. But you are right. I see now this was n't the way to do it. I must go home.'

'Anyone could see in half a tick she was n't the sort that was trying to see how far she could make you go,' Peter told Joan afterwards. 'But I did feel rotten about it.'

'What did you say? She seemed to go with you all right.'

Peter hesitated, and then he blurted out Those little curls, you know

It's rotten luck for a girl to live like that—I—I—just said "Look here, Dolores, it's not us chaps, it's you women who feel lonely. Come, cheerio! Ring us up sometimes. Goodnight."

'Best of lads! So that was how she kissed a soldier, was it? Well, anyway, we've sent her home happy.'

But, during the long drive to Stock

Everyman

well and for hours afterwards in her camp bed, Dolores Allardyce stared into the darkness. She saw a woman, no longer young, of no attractive charm, old-fashioned in person, out-ofdate in her work; she saw her whirled for a moment into Life to peep at it only and then swept back again by inexorable Fate into her hole, until -she fell asleep.

Now that six million of us have been gifted with the Imperial Vote, we are more conscious than we have been before of being a compact body. We have now a collective as well as an individual standing, and the change is a real one.

The business of public life goes on, and always has gone on, without us. Not only war, but exploration and commerce, the Church and the universities, the decision and application of the law, the newspapers, the mechanical inventions that further the production and distribution of wealth, and a host of other responsibilities tread their accustomed round ignoring us as coöperators. Of all the currents of the wide world's energy, one stream alone has never been able to do without us, and that is Art. Century and country make no difference; we are always there not as maker but as object, for we are passive in the hand of the contriver, man. We dance in strange attitudes on Greek vases, we

take mincing steps (and are never seen in profile) on Japanese fans, we look out from Mona Lisa's inscrutable smile, we lead to destruction like the Lorelei, we defend the man we love like Portia, and we lead him safely through many perils up to the highest heights like Beatrice. The imaginative creations of the world seem to be fastened to us, and whether they are poetry, tales, songs, music, the drama, or the plastic and pictorial arts, all are full of our praises. Men are never weary of us. Every generation as it arises turns toward us with fresh ardor, till, as a French writer has said, you might think there was only one story in the world, and the summary of it was this: 'She was beautiful, and he loved her.' Very little transpires in history of our relation to the nobler world of the spirit, but we may safely say that, whether for good or ill, we have 'borne all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things.'

Great as our power may have been,

it was preeminently an individual and not a collective power. Looking at the position in a somewhat superficial manner, we should unhesitatingly decide that the influence was that of one woman over one man a power intense enough to work wonders here and there, but limited to the narrow space of a single heart on the side of both giver and receiver. Now this is partly true and partly a mistake, and it is on this point I want to speak.

Before going further, let me turn for a moment to the historical past, and express our appreciation of the almost boundless honor that has been paid to us singly. Believe me, we are grateful! For the portraits of Antigone, and of Viola, and of Agnes; for the Vita Nuova, and for Rossetti's sonnets, for the Princess and Pompilia; for the Gorgon's head cut off, and for the many fiery dragons slain in our defense; for beautiful pictures of the Virgin Mary, and for the disorderly rout of Comus put to flight; for all the Queens of the Tourney and the Queens of the May, for all the gloves worn as favors or thrown down in challenge, and all the fine cloaks made muddy in our honor we render thanks for them all. But oh, it is not always May,' says the old song, and, alas! it is not. Such is the order of the world in which we live. We are all young, and all attractive, for youth in itself is attractive, and some are beautiful and have a wide range; but in a few years youth and beauty are past, and the power we possess must lie in deeper regions, or it will be as nothing in the world. We are grateful, we are a thousand times more grateful, to man when he discovers and values this underlying region; when the blossom has fallen and the burden and heat of the day make the leaves faint, then is his love our hope and our stay. For pulling in the collar year after year

against the incline, for sweet deference to an aged mother, for tender consideration to an ailing wife, for toiling at some monotonous employment for the sake of the education of his childrenfor these pictures of the beauty and courage of the soul, we do not know how to give thanks enough.

Once again, be it observed, we are dealing with the individual and not with the race. Supremely beautiful may be the sacrifice on either side, and there may be hundreds of thousands of such cases in our happy country, and yet they are all founded on the love of the single heart and not on a principle, and collectively nothing, or almost nothing, has been done for us till the last fifty years.

Turn to the reverse side of the picture and see how this absence of principle tells, and how sorely we have collectively been mishandled. Looking back over history, we find that as a

race

or community we have been cramped and baffled and thwarted, and confined to the lowest position; some of us have been stifled and dwarfed in harems and zenanas, some of us have had our feet so contracted as to be almost useless, others made into mere beasts of burden, and practically all but a few of us valued only as temporary playthings or as permanent slaves. Behind the outward show there are, moreover, secret doors leading into black chambers, where the very steam of the abyss rises up and blots out the shining of the sun for those who know what there goes on. But it is not my part to wail over agelong woes, nor to preach rebellion. My track in life has lain in the open daylight, and I know too little of these things to speak of them wisely, so let me take Mr. Kidd's words in The Science of Power rather than my own, and say that no race and no animal ‘has been so thoroughly exploited by man, as has woman.'

This is a severe indictment, and I rather fear it is true. The part that I do know something of, is that the effect on the character of women has been wretched. "The angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection,' and tyranny finds its exact counterpart in the vices of slaves. Brute force can be matched by cunning, and we have lost the perception of our high calling, and have been paltry, jealous, and unfair; it is a matter for tears.

Let us now turn our minds away from the historical position with its honors and degradations, and look for a few minutes into the dim and innocent world that lies thousands of years behind history, and see if Creation will teach us what we were intended to be. We must stoop to lowly forms of life, but if we look to 'the hole of the pit whence we were digged,' we may find some enlightenment.

The lowest of all animals, corals, sponges, and infusoria, have various strange ways of multiplying their kind, and have no sex; and where there is no division of labor there is little possibility of advance. The duty of the fish is to lay eggs by the thousand, but not to cherish or protect them; therefore, the fish has no character. The reptile works on somewhat the same plan, and, therefore, ethically considered, he is dull beyond words. The insect is no better, except the few communal insects, such as the bee and the ant; these take laborious care of their young, a standard of right and wrong is developed among themselves, and they are highly to be respected. With the birds we enter a higher world, for the parents work themselves thin in feeding their ravenous young, and the father coöperates nobly, affording us almost the only example of true paternity in the animal world. There is a glimpse here and there of the same

as I

sharing of toil and sacrifice believe is to be seen among the communal beavers but among the creatures we know intimately and treat as friends, the father is morally nonexistent. He has his own work to do in the world, and it is other than this. It is better that the two sexes should invest their capital of energy in two separate enterprises, and the male shall have the struggle for life as his portion, and the female the struggle for the life of another; this plan results in a very wonderful development of affection, memory, perseverance, fidelity to a task undertaken, and, indeed, in a first sketch or outline of the most precious thing in the world, character. In the cases we are considering the whole weight of the future, and the weight of the beginning of ethics, fall on the mother. She not only bears and feeds, but guides, teaches, protects, and avenges her family. Look at the mother cat, dog, rabbit, horse, sheep-look where you will, and in their obscure lives you will see marvels of patience and unfailing remembrance.

When all is said, however, the parallel between the animal lives and our own is incomplete. The work is hard but it is short, for, with the physical independence of the offspring, the love of the mother ceases; she becomes always indifferent, and in some cases hostile, a new task of maternity easily supplanting the old. Man is the only creature on the earth that can have six or eight children, all of different ages, and all totally unable to support themselves. Without the coöperation of the father the position is wholly untenable, and he is dragged away from his free life to defend from enemies and to provide food. Thus is he, too, educated into altruism; but in all mankind, whether savage or civilized, it is the mother who reigns