pen your eyes before you go too far. You
belong to the people who are responsible for handing on the world's
treasure. As we've agreed, there never was a time when it was attacked
from so many sides. Can't you see what's at stake?'

'I see that many of the pleasantest things may be in eclipse for a
time.'

'My dear, they would die off the face of the earth.'

'No, they are too necessary.'

'To you and me. Not to the brawlers in Hyde Park. The life of civilized
beings is a very complex thing. It isn't filled by good intentions nor
even by the cardinal virtues. The function of the older societies is to
hand on the best things the world has won, so that those who come after,
instead of having to go back to barbarism, may start from where the best
of their day left off. We do for manners and the arts in general what
the Moors did for learning when the wild hordes came down. There were
capital chaps among the barbarians,' he smiled, 'I haven't a doubt! But
it was the men who held fast to civilization's clue, they were the
people who mattered. _We_ matter. We hold the clue.' He was recovering
his spirits. 'Your friends want to open the gates still wider to the
Huns. You want even the Moors overwhelmed.'

'Many women are as jealous to guard the old gains as the men are. Wait!'
She leaned forward. 'I begin to see! They are more keen about it than
the mass of men. The women! They are civilization's only ally against
your brother, the Goth.'

He laughed. 'When you are as absurd as that, my dear, I don't mind. No,
not a little bit. And I really believe I'm too fond of you to quarrel on
any ground.'

'You don't care enough about anything to quarrel about it,' she said,
smiling, too. 'But it's just as well'--she rose and began to draw on her
glove--'just as well that each of us should know where to find the
other. So tell me, what if it should be a question of going forward in
the suffrage direction or going back?'

'You mean----'

'----on from latchkeys and University degrees to Parliament, or back.'

'Oh, back,' he said hastily. 'Back. Yes, back to the harem.'

When the words were out, Lord Borrodaile had laughed a little
uneasily--like one who has surprised even himself by some
too-illuminating avowal. 'See here,' he put out a hand. 'I'm not going
to let you go for a minute or two. I've brought something to show you.
This foolish discussion put it out of my head.' But the revealing word
he had flung out--it seemed t