The foreigner made a vivid, surprised, affirmatory gesture. "Exactly!
exactly! exactly, Madame!" he cried. "It is the question I have asked
myself a thousand times: Why is it--why is it that women so
strong-willed, so unyielding in the seeking what they desire, why is it
that apparently they have no influence on the general fabric of the
society in--"

"Perhaps it is," said Lydia unsparingly, her latent anger coming to the
surface again and furnishing her fluency, "perhaps it is because people
who see our faults don't help us to correct them, but flatter us by
telling us we haven't any, and all the time think ill of us behind our
backs."

The lecturer began to answer with aplomb and an attempt at graceful
cynicism: "Ah, Madame, put yourself in my place! I am addressing
audiences of women. Would it be tactful to--" but under Lydia's honest
eyes he faltered, stopped, flushed darkly under his heavy beard, up over
his high, narrow forehead to the roots of his gray hair. He swallowed
hard. "Madame," he said, "you have rebuked me--deservedly. I--I demand
your pardon."

"Oh, you needn't mind me," said Lydia humbly; "my opinion doesn't amount
to anything. I oughtn't to talk, either. I don't _do_ anything different
from the rest--the women downstairs, I mean. I can only see there's
something wrong--" She found the other's gaze into her troubled eyes so
friendly that she was moved to cry out to him, all her hostility gone:
"What _is_ the trouble, anyhow?"

The lecturer flushed again, this time touched by her appeal. "I proudly
put at your service any reflections I have made--as though you were my
daughter. I have a daughter about your age, who is also married--who
faces your problems. Madame, you look fatigued--will you not sit down?"
He led her to a sofa on one side of the hall and took a seat beside her.
"Is not the trouble," he began, "that the women have too much leisure
and the men too little--the women too little work, the men too much?"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" Lydia's meditations had long ago carried her past
that point; she was impatient at his taking time to state it. "But how
can we change it?"

"You cannot change it in a day. It has taken many years to grow. It has
seemed to me that one way to change it is by using your leisure
differently. Even those women who use their leisure for the best
self-improvement have not used it well. Many of my countrymen say that
the culture of American women is like a child's idea