ad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the city
permitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls,
their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or coloured
cheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed with
elaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces with
eyes half closed in pleasure.

"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.

"Workers--prosperous workers. What you would have called the middle
class. Independent tradesmen with little separate businesses have
vanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers of a
hundred sorts. To-night is a holiday of course, and every dancing place
in the city will be crowded, and every place of worship."

"But--the women?"

"The same. There's a thousand forms of work for women now. But you had
the beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. Most women
are independent now. Most of these are married more or less--there are a
number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, and
enables them to enjoy themselves."

"I see," said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl
of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs.
"And these are--mothers."

"Most of them."

"The more I see of these things the more complex I find your problems.
This, for instance, is a surprise. That news from Paris was a surprise."

In a little while he spoke again:

"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way
of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me--habits
based, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with. Of course, in our
time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish
them, to devote herself to them, to educate them--all the essentials of
moral and mental education a child owed its mother. Or went without.
Quite a number, I admit, went without. Nowadays, clearly, there is no
more need for such care than if they were butterflies. I see that! Only
there was an ideal--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and
serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was a
sort of worship--"

He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."

"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."

Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.
Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.

"Of course I se