rying for its mother. Then he moved on, refusing
"Mabel's" arm.

Men began to close their offices and shops; window sashes banged; keys
rattled in locks. More men appeared upon the streets. They lighted
cigars, loitered, not quite ready yet to go home. When a man knows his
wife and daughters are at home, he feels safe. He is in no hurry to be
there himself. This was the hour when every man in Jordantown was
accustomed to know that. If any one had asked a single one of them the
question, "Where's your wife?" he would have answered, "At home, of
course!" It was only the Colonel, half seas over, who had his doubts,
but the Colonel was notoriously psychic where women were concerned.

At this very moment a queer thing happened: a stream of women poured
into the square and took their way down both sides of it, almost
treading upon the toes of the men as they passed. And they were walking
leisurely.

These were undoubtedly the same women who had passed at four o'clock on
their way to the Civic League and Cemetery Association. Every man in the
streets recognized them. Yet they were not the same. They did not return
salutations. For the first time the men were ignored, not exactly
snubbed, but literally not seen by the women in Jordantown. And each
man was alone, there were not enough of them together to talk about it;
they could only feel and wonder, as they stood staring in amazement at
those fluttering white and black and blue and pink figures disappearing
around corners and down the avenues.

The sense of femininity is only a sense of weakness. And what we call
masculinity is only the sense of strength, which may belong to women as
well as to men under the same conditions. The men on the square had just
witnessed a miracle, never seen before in this world--the rise of
egotism in the feminine portion of the community, which caused every one
of them to enter that zone of man on an equal footing with men in
consciousness. And naturally the men did not understand that. They were
so dazed that they could not even discuss it with one another. What they
had experienced was too subtle to put into words. Not a man of them
looked any other man in the face as they followed those women home. But
every one of them was asking himself some question: "What's my wife
doing out so late?" "Why didn't Selah Adams speak to me?" "What in
hell's that old cat, Susan Walton, up to now, wading by me as if she
owned the town?" "Oh, it's nothing! t