n architect called.

Under his arm he had a portfolio of plans for a Welfare Building which he
had drawn exactly according to Mary's suggestions. As long as the idea
had been a nebulous one--drawn only in fancy and coloured with nothing
stronger than conversation, she had liked it immensely; but seeing now
precisely how the building would look--how the space would be divided,
she found herself shaking her head.

"It's my own fault," she said. "You have followed out every one of my
ideas--but somehow--well, I don't like it: that's all. If you'll leave
these drawings, I'll think them over and call you up again in a few
days."

At Judge Cutler's suggestion, Archey had been elected treasurer to take
Burdon's place. Mary took the plans into his office and showed them to
him. They were still discussing them, sitting at opposite sides of his
flat-top desk, when the twelve o'clock whistle blew. A few minutes later,
the four-hour workers passed through the gate, the men walking with their
wives, the children playing between.

"I wonder how it's going to turn out," said Archey.

"I wonder ..." said Mary. "Of course it's too early to tell yet. I don't
know.... Time will tell."

"It was the only solution," he told her.

"I wonder ..." she mused again. "Anyhow it was something definite. If
women are really going to take up men's trades, it's only right that they
should know what it means. As long as we just keep talking on general
lines about a thing, we can make it sound as nice as we like. But when we
try to put theory into practice ... it doesn't always seem the same.

"Take these plans, for instance," she ruefully remarked. "I thought I
knew exactly what I wanted. But now that I see it drawn out to scale, I
don't like it. And that, perhaps, is what we've been doing here in the
factory. We have taken a view of woman's possible future and we have
drawn it out to scale. Everybody can see what it looks like now--they can
think about it--and talk about it--and then they can decide whether they
want it or not...."

He caught a note in her voice that had a touch of emptiness in it.

"Do you know what I would do if I were you?" he gently asked.

She looked at him, his eyes eager with sympathy, his smile tender and
touched with an admiration so deep that it might be called devotion.
Never before had Archey seemed so restful to her--never before with him
had she felt so much at home.

"If I smile at him, he'll blush," she ca