gs that only women will
stand.... The women will lean over and look at the men and smile and
talk to them as they fancy. And each woman will have this; she will have
a little silken ladder she can let down if she chooses--if she wants to
talk closer..."

"The men would still be competing."

"There perhaps--yes. But they'd have to abide by the women's decisions."

I raised one or two difficulties, and for a while we played with this
idea.

"Ewart," I said, "this is like Doll's Island.

"Suppose," I reflected, "an unsuccessful man laid siege to a balcony and
wouldn't let his rival come near it?"

"Move him on," said Ewart, "by a special regulation. As one does
organ-grinders. No difficulty about that. And you could forbid it--make
it against the etiquette. No life is decent without etiquette.... And
people obey etiquette sooner than laws..."

"H'm," I said, and was struck by an idea that is remote in the world of
a young man. "How about children?" I asked; "in the City? Girls are all
very well. But boys, for example--grow up."

"Ah!" said Ewart. "Yes. I forgot. They mustn't grow up inside.... They'd
turn out the boys when they were seven. The father must come with a
little pony and a little gun and manly wear, and take the boy away. Then
one could come afterwards to one's mother's balcony.... It must be fine
to have a mother. The father and the son..."

"This is all very pretty in its way," I said at last, "but it's a dream.
Let's come back to reality. What I want to know is, what are you going
to do in Brompton, let us say, or Walham Green NOW?"

"Oh! damn it!" he remarked, "Walham Green! What a chap you are,
Ponderevo!" and he made an abrupt end to his discourse. He wouldn't even
reply to my tentatives for a time.

"While I was talking just now," he remarked presently,

"I had a quite different idea."

"What?"

"For a masterpiece. A series. Like the busts of the Caesars. Only
not heads, you know. We don't see the people who do things to us
nowadays..."

"How will you do it, then?"

"Hands--a series of hands! The hands of the Twentieth Century. I'll do
it. Some day some one will discover it--go there--see what I have done,
and what is meant by it."

"See it where?"

"On the tombs. Why not? The Unknown Master of the Highgate Slope! All
the little, soft feminine hands, the nervous ugly males, the hands of
the flops, and the hands of the snatchers! And Grundy's loose, lean,
knuckly affair--Grundy th