max lifted me from the chair. It
was his heaven and happiness. His stormy passage was ended. I saw him
standing in the rain among the steerage passengers of an Atlantic
steamer--and suddenly through the gray rushing clouds, appeared the
Goddess of Liberty. He had come home at last--to a port of freedom and
peace and equality----"

"God have mercy on him," murmured Cairns.

"Yes," said Bedient, "a poor little shaking picture show, and I wept
like a boy in the dark. It was my New York, too.... But we shall be
that--all that the world in its distress and darkness thinks of us, we
must be. You know a man is at his best with those who think highly of
him. The great world-good must come out of America, for its bones still
bend, its sutures are not closed.... You and I spent our early years
afield with troops and wars, before we were adult enough to perceive
the bigger conflict--the sex conflict. This is on, David. It must clear
the atmosphere before men and women realize that their interests are
_one_; that neither can rise by holding down the other; that the
present relations of men and women, broadly speaking, are false to
themselves, to each other, and crippling to the morality and vitality
of the race.

"You have seen it, for it is about you. The heart of woman to-day is
kept in a half-starved state. That's why so many women run to cultists
and false prophets and devourers, who preach a heaven of the senses. In
another way, the race is sustaining a tragic loss. Look at the young
women from the wisest homes--the finest flower of young womanhood--our
fairest chance for sons of strength. How few of them marry! I tell you,
David, they are afraid. They prefer to accept the bitter alternative of
spinsterhood, rather than the degrading sense of being less a partner
than a property. They see that men are not grown, except physically.
They suffer, unmated, and the tragedy lies in the leakage of genius
from the race."

Cairns' mind moved swiftly from one to another of the five women he had
called together to meet his friend.

"David," Bedient added after a moment, "the man who does the great
good, must do it _through_ women, for women are listening to-day! Men
are down in the clatter--examining, analyzing, bartering. The man with
a message must drive it home through women! If it is a true message,
they will _feel_ it. Women do not analyze, they realize. When women
realize their incomparable importance, that they are identifie