a value in Jean Dunbarton far beyond her
fortune.'

He looked at her dully.

'More than any other girl I know--if I keep her from you, that gentle,
inflexible creature could rouse in men the old half-superstitious
fear----'

'Fear! Are you mad?'

'Mad!' she echoed. 'Unsexed'--those are the words to-day. In the Middle
Ages men cried out 'Witch!' and burnt her--the woman who served no man's
bed or board.

'You want to make the poor child believe----'

'She sees for herself we've come to a place where we find there's a
value in women apart from the value men see in them. You teach us not to
look to you for some of the things we need most. If women must be freed
by women, we have need of such as----' Her eyes went to the door that
Stonor still had an air of guarding. 'Who knows--she may be the new Joan
of Arc.'

He paused, and for that moment he seemed as bankrupt in denunciation as
he was in hope. This personal application of the new heresy found him
merely aghast, with no words but 'That _she_ should be the sacrifice!'

'You have taught us to look very calmly on the sacrifice of women,' was
the ruthless answer. 'Men tell us in every tongue, it's "a necessary
evil."'

He stood still a moment, staring at the ground.

'One girl's happiness--against a thing nobler than happiness for
thousands--who can hesitate? _Not Jean._'

'Good God! can't you see that this crazed campaign you'd start her
on--even if it's successful, it can only be so through the help of men?
What excuse shall you make your own soul for not going straight to the
goal?'

'You think we wouldn't be glad,' she said, 'to go straight to the goal?'

'I do. I see you'd much rather punish me and see her revel in a morbid
self-sacrifice.'

'You say I want to punish you only because, like other men, you won't
take the trouble to understand what we do want--or how determined we are
to have it. You can't kill this New Spirit among women.' She went
nearer. 'And you couldn't make a greater mistake than to think it finds
a home only in the exceptional or the unhappy. It is so strange to see a
man like you as much deluded as the Hyde Park loafers, who say to
Ernestine Blunt, "Who's hurt _your_ feelings?" Why not realize'--she
came still closer, if she had put out her hand she would have touched
him--'this is a thing that goes deeper than personal experience? And
yet,' she said in a voice so hushed that it was full of a sense of the
girl on the other sid