Long may it reign!"

Round spots of color had come out on Miss Emelene's long cheeks.

"A man who can think like that has the true--the true--what shall I say,
Alys?"

"But, ladies, I protest that I'm not--"

"Has the true chivalry of spirit, Emelene, that the women are too stark
raving mad to appreciate. You can't come here, Mr. Evans, to two women
to whom womanliness and love of home, thank God, are still uppermost and
try to convert us to--"

Here Mr. Evans executed a triple gyration, to the annoyance of Hanna,
who withdrew from the gesture, and raised his voice to a shout that was
not without a note of command.

"Convert you! Why women alive, what I've been bursting a blood vessel
trying to say during the length of this interview is that I'd as soon
dip my soul in boiling oil as try to convert you away from the cause.
_My_ cause! _Our_ cause!"

"Why--"

"I'm here to tell you that I'm with my partner head-over-heels on the
plank he has taken."

"But we thought--"

"We thought you and Betty Sheridan--why, my cousin Genevieve Remington
told me that--"

"Yes, yes, Miss Emelene. But not even the wiles of a pretty woman can
hold out indefinitely against Truth! A broad-minded man has got to
keep the door of his mind open to conviction, or it decays of mildew. I
confess that finally I am convinced that if there is one platform more
than another upon which George Remington deserves his election it is on
the brave and chivalrous principles he has so courageously come out with
in the current _Sentinel_. Whatever may have been between Betty Sheridan
and--"

"Mr. Evans, you don't mean to tell me that you and Betty Sheridan have
quarreled! Such a desirable match from every point of view, family and
all! It goes to show what a rattle-pated bunch of women they are! Any
really clever girl with an eye to her future, anti or pro, could shift
her politics when it came to a question of matri--"

"Mrs. Smith, there comes a time in every modern man's life when he's got
to keep his politics and his pretty girls separate, or suffrage will get
him if he don't watch out!"

"Yes, and Mr. Evans, if what I hear is true, a good-looking woman can
talk you out of your safety deposit key!"

"That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Smith, and I'll prove it to you.
Despite any wavering I may have exhibited, I now stand, as George puts
it in his article, 'ready to conserve the threatened flower of womanhood
by also endeavoring to conserve