ve conquered in the world of men and affairs," she
hurried on, "against resistance, but it isn't the kind of resistance I
mean. It doesn't differ essentially from the struggle in the animal
kingdom."

I bowed. "Thank you," I said.

She laughed a little.

"Oh, I have worshipped success, too. Perhaps I still do--that isn't the
point. An animal conquers his prey, he is in competition, in constant
combat with others of his own kind, and perhaps he brings to bear a
certain amount of intelligence in the process. Intelligence isn't the
point, either. I know what I'm saying is trite, it's banal, it sounds
like moralizing, and perhaps it is, but there is so much confusion to-day
that I think we are in danger of losing sight of the simpler verities,
and that we must suffer for it. Your super-animal, your supreme-stag
subdues the other stags, but he never conquers himself, he never feels
the need of it, and therefore he never comprehends what we call tragedy."

"I gather your inference," I said, smiling.

"Well," she admitted, "I haven't stated the case with the shade of
delicacy it deserves, but I wanted to make my meaning clear. We have
raised up a class in America, but we have lost sight, a
little--considerably, I think--of the distinguishing human
characteristics. The men you were eulogizing are lords of the forest,
more or less, and we women, who are of their own kind, what they have
made us, surrender ourselves in submission and adoration to the lordly
stag in the face of all the sacraments that have been painfully
inaugurated by the race for the very purpose of distinguishing us from
animals. It is equivalent to saying that there is no moral law; or, if
there is, nobody can define it. We deny, inferentially, a human realm as
distinguished from the animal, and in the denial it seems to me we are
cutting ourselves off from what is essential human development. We are
reverting to the animal. I have lost and you have lost--not entirely,
perhaps, but still to a considerable extent--the bloom of that fervour,
of that idealism, we may call it, that both of us possessed when we were
in our teens. We had occasional visions. We didn't know what they meant,
or how to set about their accomplishment, but they were not, at least,
mere selfish aspirations; they implied, unconsciously no doubt, an
element of service, and certainly our ideal of marriage had something
fine in it."

"Isn't it for a higher ideal of marriage that we are