."

Mrs. Brinkley was certainly amused at this. "It seems to me that there
you've been anticipated by nature--not to mention art."

"Oh, not in my particular view. The women in America represent the
aristocracy which exists everywhere else in both sexes. You are born to
the patrician leisure; you have the accomplishments and the clothes
and manners and ideals; and we men are a natural commonalty, born to
business, to newspapers, to cigars, and horses. This natural female
aristocracy of ours establishes the forms, usages, places, and times of
society. The epicene aristocracies of other countries turn night into
day in their social pleasures, and our noblesse sympathetically follows
their example. You ladies, who can lie till noon next day, come to
Jane's reception at eleven o'clock, and you drag along with you a herd
of us brokers, bankers, merchants, lawyers, and doctors, who must be at
our offices and counting-rooms before nine in the morning. The hours of
us work-people are regulated by the wholesome industries of the
great democracy which we're a part of; and the hours of our wives and
daughters by the deleterious pleasures of the Old World aristocracy.
That's the reason we're not all at home in bed."

"I thought you were not at home in bed because you couldn't sleep."

"I know it. And you've no idea how horrible a bed is that you can't
sleep in." The old man's voice broke in a tremor. "Ah, it's a bed of
torture! I spend many a wicked hour in mine, envying St. Lawrence his
gridiron. But what do you think of my theory?"

"It's a very pretty theory. My only objection to it is that it's too
flattering. You know I rather prefer to abuse my sex; and to be set up
as a natural aristocracy--I don't know that I can quite agree to
that, even to account satisfactorily for being at your sister-in-law's
reception."

"You're too modest, Mrs. Brinkley."

"No, really. There ought to be some men among us--men without morrows.
Now, why don't you and my husband set an example to your sex? Why don't
you relax your severe sense of duty? Why need you insist upon being at
your offices every morning at nine? Why don't you fling off these habits
of lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of the
higher civilisation?"

Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for her
satire. Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to live
restrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increas