on I began to perceive in her that had been
absent in the old Nancy; but the old Nancy had ceased to exist, and here
instead was a highly developed, highly specialized creature in whom I
delighted; and after taking thought I would not have robbed her of
fine acquired attribute. As she had truly observed, we were both
conventional; conventionality was part of the price we had willingly
paid for membership in that rarer world we had both achieved. It was
a world, to be sure, in which we were rapidly learning to take the law
into our own hands without seeming to defy it, in order that the fear
of it might remain in those less fortunately placed and endowed: we
had begun with the appropriation of the material property of our
fellow-citizens, which we took legally; from this point it was, of
course, merely a logical step to take--legally, too other gentlemen's
human property--their wives, in short: the more progressive East had set
us our example, but as yet we had been chary to follow it.

About this time rebellious voices were beginning to make themselves
heard in the literary wilderness proclaiming liberty--liberty of the
sexes. There were Russian novels and French novels, and pioneer English
novels preaching liberty with Nietzschean stridency, or taking it for
granted. I picked these up on Nancy's table.

"Reading them?" she said, in answer to my query. "Of course I'm reading
them. I want to know what these clever people are thinking, even if I
don't always agree with them, and you ought to read them too. It's quite
true what foreigners say about our men,--that they live in a groove,
that they haven't any range of conversation."

"I'm quite willing to be educated," I replied. "I haven't a doubt that I
need it."

She was leaning back in her chair, her hands behind her head, a posture
she often assumed. She looked up at me amusedly.

"I'll acknowledge that you're more teachable than most of them," she
said. "Do you know, Hugh, sometimes you puzzle me greatly. When you are
here and we're talking together I can never think of you as you are out
in the world, fighting for power--and getting it. I suppose it's part
of your charm, that there is that side of you, but I never consciously
realize it. You're what they call a dual personality."

"That's a pretty hard name!" I exclaimed.

She laughed.

"I can't help it--you are. Oh, not disagreeably so, quite
normally--that's the odd thing about you. Sometimes I believe that