"I was not going to put it like that. Rather, under the lying garb of
false masculinity!"

"Such a subtle distinction!" I murmured.

"Whom then," asked Fraulein Elsa, looking adoringly at the Advanced
Lady--"whom then do you consider the true woman?"

"She is the incarnation of comprehending Love!"

"But my dear Frau Professor," protested Frau Kellermann, "you must
remember that one has so few opportunities for exhibiting Love within
the family circle nowadays. One's husband is at business all day, and
naturally desires to sleep when he returns home--one's children are out
of the lap and in at the university before one can lavish anything at
all upon them!"

"But Love is not a question of lavishing," said the Advanced Lady.
"It is the lamp carried in the bosom touching with serene rays all the
heights and depths of--"

"Darkest Africa," I murmured flippantly.

She did not hear.

"The mistake we have made in the past--as a sex," said she, "is in not
realising that our gifts of giving are for the whole world--we are the
glad sacrifice of ourselves!"

"Oh!" cried Elsa rapturously, and almost bursting into gifts as she
breathed--"how I know that! You know ever since Fritz and I have been
engaged, I share the desire to give to everybody, to share everything!"

"How extremely dangerous," said I.

"It is only the beauty of danger, or the danger of beauty" said the
Advanced Lady--"and there you have the ideal of my book--that woman is
nothing but a gift."

I smiled at her very sweetly. "Do you know," I said, "I, too, would like
to write a book, on the advisability of caring for daughters, and taking
them for airings and keeping them out of kitchens!"

I think the masculine element must have felt these angry vibrations:
they ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to
see Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses
shining in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest",
as Herr Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour
milk with fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most
friendly place, with tables in a rose-garden where hens and chickens
ran riot--even flopping upon the disused tables and pecking at the
red checks on the cloths. We broke the bread into the bowls, added the
cream, and stirred it round with flat wooden spoons, the landlord and
his wife standing by.

"Splendid weather!" said Herr Erchardt, waving