ery to be gone through with at the
first, and perhaps it seems the more irksome to me because I have been
so long idly my own master. However," he added, "I shall get down to it,
or up to it, after a while, I dare say. That is my intention, at any
rate."

"I don't think I have ever wished that I were a man," she said after a
moment, "but I often find myself envying a man's opportunities."

"Do not women have opportunities, too?" he said. "Certainly they have
greatly to do with the determination of affairs."

"Oh, yes," she replied, "it is the usual answer that woman's part is to
influence somebody. As for her own life, it is largely made for her.
She has, for the most part, to take what comes to her by the will of
others."

"And yet," said John, "I fancy that there has seldom been a great career
in which some woman's help or influence was not a factor."

"Even granting that," she replied, "the career was the man's, after all,
and the fame and visible reward. A man will sometimes say, 'I owe all my
success to my wife, or my mother, or sister,' but he never really
believes it, nor, in fact, does any one else. It is _his_ success, after
all, and the influence of the woman is but a circumstance, real and
powerful though it may be. I am not sure," she added, "that woman's
influence, so called, isn't rather an overrated thing. Women like to
feel that they have it, and men, in matters which they hold lightly,
flatter them by yielding, but I am doubtful if a man ever arrives at or
abandons a settled course or conviction through the influence of a
woman, however exerted."

"I think you are wrong," said John, "and I feel sure of so much as this:
that a man might often be or do for a woman's sake that which he would
not for its sake or his own."

"That is quite another thing," she said. "There is in it no question of
influence; it is one of impulse and motive."

"I have told you to-night," said John, "that what you said to me had
influenced me greatly."

"Pardon me," she replied, "you employed a figure which exactly defined
your condition. You said I supplied the drop which caused the solution
to crystallize--that is, to elaborate your illustration, that it was
already at the point of saturation with your own convictions and
intentions."

"I said also," he urged, "that you had set the time for me. Is the idea
unpleasant to you?" he asked after a moment, while he watched her face.
She did not at once reply, but present