-then you run
into an Althea, and smash goes the dream!"

"Dear, we can't change our natures in one generation, nor two, nor
three. When we come back a few centuries from now, think what splendid
creatures women will be!"

"Lord, Jane, I don't want to come back!"

"I do--just to see my twenty-fifth great-granddaughter!"

"What gets me is that a man with brains like Jerry can endure that old
sex stuff! Flattery, sentiment, adoration--bah!"

"Men can't change in a minute either, Bobs!"

"To live with a woman like you and waste one minute with
Althea--well--it's weak minded, that's what it is."

"Most men don't want heroic qualities to live with, Bobs. They haven't
even sensed this comrade idea of ours yet, the majority of them. They
still like mastery, special privilege, their own code; after all,
they're human!"

"I'm sick of 'em!" Bobs remarked.

"Bobs, you're too big a woman to let one man set you against all men.
That isn't fair. We can't be against them, dear. We're just human
creatures here in this complex world, trying to make life bearable--to
make it constructive; we have to do it together, in affectionate
fellowship."

"Give me time, old, wise Jane! But scold me and teach me, too. Let's go
play with Baby."

"Baby's a man!" teased Jane.

"Bah!"

These were days of almost breathless anticipation for Jane. Christiansen
was taking her to his publisher friend on the unfortunate occasion when
they had encountered Jerry. The book had been in the firm's hands ever
since. It seemed to Jane an eternity, in which she had not even
Christiansen's encouragement, for he had disappeared on one of his
frequent absences. He was at the sanatorium with his wife, Jane
supposed. She went to her desk, in the white room, every morning, just
the same, working over the notes for a new story which had been knocking
at the door of her brain for a long time. The theme had sprung
full-armed, as it were, from some remark of a character in the other
book; she found that it had been developing all the time since its
inception in that busy forge, the subconscious mind! The central
character was a woman of a type unfamiliar to Jane, and yet, in the
necromancy of imagination, she found she knew this girl like a twin
soul. How she looked, what she thought, how she felt--it was all there
in Jane's consciousness. It kept her mind off the fate of the other book
to work at this new one. So she began it. Her habit of work stood her in