s some
writer has remarked, "It isn't women's doing." Oh no. They don't care
for these things. That sort of aspiration is not much in their way; and
it shall be a funny world, the world of their arranging, where the
Irrelevant would fantastically step in to take the place of the sober
humdrum Imaginative...

I raised my hand to stop my friend Marlow.

"Do you really believe what you have said?" I asked, meaning no
offence, because with Marlow one never could be sure.

"Only on certain days of the year," said Marlow readily with a malicious
smile. "To-day I have been simply trying to be spacious and I perceive
I've managed to hurt your susceptibilities which are consecrated to
women. When you sit alone and silent you are defending in your mind the
poor women from attacks which cannot possibly touch them. I wonder
_what_ can touch them? But to soothe your uneasiness I will point out
again that an Irrelevant world would be very amusing, if the women take
care to make it as charming as they alone can, by preserving for us
certain well-known, well-established, I'll almost say hackneyed,
illusions, without which the average male creature cannot get on! And
that condition is very important. For there is nothing more provoking
than the Irrelevant when it has ceased to amuse and charm; and then the
danger would be of the subjugated masculinity in its exasperation,
making some brusque, unguarded movement and accidentally putting its
elbow through the fine tissue of the world of which I speak. And that
would be fatal to it. For nothing looks more irretrievably deplorable
than fine tissue which has been damaged. The women themselves would be
the first to become disgusted with their own creation."

There was something of women's highly practical sanity and also of their
irrelevancy in the conduct of Miss de Barral's amazing governess. It
appeared from Fyne's narrative that the day before the first rumble of
the cataclysm the questionable young man arrived unexpectedly in
Brighton to stay with his "Aunt." To all outward appearance everything
was going on normally; the fellow went out riding with the girl in the
afternoon as he often used to do--a sight which never failed to fill
Mrs Fyne with indignation. Fyne himself was down there with his family
for a whole week and was called to the window to behold the iniquity in
its progress and to share in his wife's feelings. There was not even a
groom with them. And Mr