ominent, as everybody
knows. (In this way she had eclipsed her old rival, Mrs. Billman, who
had kept to Art and Society.) Hazel was on intimate terms with a very
rich young married woman, who lived apart from her husband, "for the
very best of reasons, my dear," and who spoke in private houses on the
Cause.

In those happier days when Milly still had her own little place in the
world, she had rather made fun of Hazel's views and imputed them to
social ambition. "She wants to be talked about," she said. But since the
experience of widowhood, Milly was changing her mind and listened much
more attentively to all that Hazel had to say about "the woman
movement,"--the "endowment of motherhood," the "necessity for the
vote,"--and read "What Forty Thousand Women Want," "Love and Marriage,"
and other handbooks of the Cause.

One of the theories with which Milly most heartily agreed was that the
labor of women in the home should be paid just as the labor of men.
Milly felt that she had a valid claim for a number of years' wages still
due her. This and other subjects she talked over with Hazel and became
fired with enthusiasm for the Cause. Now, in her need of work, she
asked,--

"Why shouldn't I do something for the movement?"

"I've been thinking of that," Hazel replied, with a shade of hesitation
in her voice.

"You said there were paid secretaries and organizers."

"Yes--there are some, and we need more."

She did not explain that there were hundreds of eager young women,
college graduates and social workers, younger and much better informed
and more modern than Milly,--in a word, trained women. She did not wish
to discourage Milly, and believed she had enough influence with Mrs.
Laverne (the pretty married worker) and with Mrs. Exeter, the social
leader most prominently identified with the Cause, to work Milly into
some paid place. So she said reflectively,--

"There's to be a most important meeting of the leaders in the movement
at Mrs. Exeter's, and I'll see what I can do."

With a laughing "Votes for Women" and "For a Woman's World," the two
friends kissed and parted. Shortly afterwards a card came to Milly from
a very grand person in the social world, a name that is quite familiar
wherever newspapers penetrate. The card invited Mrs. John Bragdon to
take part in a meeting of those interested in the Woman Forward Movement
on the evening of the twentieth, at which addresses would be made by
certain well-known pe