gives us--us married women--something to do. That's the real
answer--the real cause, I think, of the woman question. These men have
gone on inventing vacuum cleaners and gas-stoves and apartment hotels
and servants that know more than we do. They haven't treated us fairly.
They've taken away all our occupation, and now we've got to retaliate.
We can't keep house for them any more, and, if we--if we care anything
about them, or want to help them, we've got to go into business, or to
help them vote.... Well, they brought it on themselves. They've got too
proud. They used to be dependent on us: now, we're dependent on them,
on their inventions and their servants. So, we're going to show them.
We'll make them dependent on us in the wider outside world, just as they
used to be dependent on us in the home. They've hurt our pride, and
we're going to make them pay. They say we are nervous and reckless and
always on the go.... It's their fault: they've made the new woman, and
now we are going to make the new man. They put us out of work, and made
us so, and now they're going to be sorry.... The time is fast coming
when each of us will have at least three or four men--"

It was Miss Johnson who caused the interruption to this burst of
eloquence.

"Why, that's positively immoral!" gasped the outraged spinster.

"--at least three or four men dependent upon her," concluded the
unabashed president of the Civitas Club, as she cast a withering look on
her enemy, who quailed visibly. "And I think that's all," Cicily added,
contentedly. She felt that she could with justice claim to have
conducted herself nobly throughout a critical situation.

"I move that we adjourn," said Mrs. Flynn, energetically. Her vigorous
temperament would permit no longer sulking in silence despite the
humiliation to which she had so recently been subjected.

Mrs. Carrington, however, had not yet rejected all hope of office.

"We must first select a secretary," she suggested.

This was opposed by Miss Johnson, always persistently moved to discredit
the older woman who had snubbed her socially.

"Why not select a professional stenographer as a member of the club;
then make her secretary? Any number of young working women would
doubtless be glad of the honor." This brought an outcry against the
admission of any professional working woman into the exclusive Civitas.

"Oh, remember that we have ideals!" Ruth Howard remonstrated, with
sincere, if vague, adh