love a woman who
demands truth and not untruth as her reasonable service. The
responsibility rests with you women. You can not only make men lie, but
you can make them believe that there is no such thing as truth in the
universe. Isn't it so, Lenox?"

Mr. Lenox smiled and nodded, Jove-like.

"Oh, yes, they pull some strings," he said; "but don't cocker them up
too much. Don't make them think we are nothing but clay in their hands."

"You couldn't, because, to our sorrow, we know better," retorted his
wife.

"Nevertheless, you've unsettled everything," said Madeline dejectedly.

"But, Miss Elton," Norris put in, "you must not think that I believe
that a man is without responsibility for the kind of woman he loves.
That is where the first turning up or down comes in. He's no right to
give his soul to the thing that is mean or base. He has the right to
choose his road, but after he's chosen, he has to travel wherever the
road leads. Dick's disintegration began from the moment that he met
Miss Quincy. I've known it for a long time."

"Poor little thing!" said Madeline. "She is so small. I hope she will
grow to be something like a mate for Dick."

"Do not flatter yourself with wishes," cried Mrs. Lenox. "There's only
one soil in which the soul can grow, and that is love. Unless I misread
her, there is no room in her for anything but Lena Quincy Percival."

"And yet," objected Ellery, "she is certainly not a person weighted with
intellect. I should say she is all impulse and emotion."

"Anomalous but by no means uncommon, Mr. Norris," she rejoined. "All
emotion, yet without emotion of the heart. In her little world, self
lies at the equator, and every one else is pushed off to the frozen
poles."

The others looked at her doubtfully.

"Don't you think I have studied her? She has been a bald revelation to
me of things I have only half understood in better-bred women. She's
like a weed transplanted from her lean ground to a garden and grown more
luxuriant in her weediness. Do you know what I think? I believe that
when the last judgment shall strip her of her sweet pink flesh, there
will be nothing found inside but a little dry kernel, too hard to bite,
and labeled 'self'."

"You are positively vicious, Vera," said her husband gravely.

The tears came to her eyes as she turned to him.

"I really loved Dick, and she has stung him."

"But all this does not explain her hatred for Madeline."

"Do you not understan