“They never should have been anything less. In fact, idiots don’t belong. They are transgressions of law, as much as criminals. They, with hundreds of other things, are but the results of women’s unnatural relation to the university-education, which must be by _her_ bestowed on man,” said Ethelbert, leading them away from proximity to Reginald. Because even though he seemed unobservant of what was going on about him, she thought that when he was not directly _addressed_ he (as if in echo) heard what was said to or about him. This manner of dealing with him rendered his visible presence in this world of effects a means by which those who were about him in this world were partially introduced to the other. The judge and Mrs. Mancredo stood drawn together, looking back at this alienated mentality. Then she half whispered: “They say at the hotel that he ought to—well—not be at the hotel, no matter what big bills I am willing to pay, and all that. So many people are in a rickety mental condition themselves, that—instead of _studying_ a case like this, Miss Ethel, as _you_ do, it alarms them, and—and—well, I don’t know myself what it does to them—yes, and to me, too. I will confess I dislike sick men. And it sometimes seems to be not Reginald at all, but a ghost which has arisen out of his childhood—sort of waiting to have another try at what he can make of life.” “Yet there are hundreds of such men everywhere, and we can’t afford to use our brains over them. Why should women spend their lives doing such jobs? Men choose to go the pace that kills, one way and another, and will not hear one word from women till they drop down dead weights on the shoulders of—” Mrs. Mancredo broke forth into convulsive weeping. This was too much for Judge Elkhorn. He took sudden leave, assured of one thing: that was, that Mrs. Mancredo saw the cleansing work which would have to be done in society’s augean stables if women took up the business of turning these stables into ‘the home of the brave and the free.’ And he saw that the idea that she _ought_ to save this man, now had a hold on Mrs. Mancredo, and he knew that when a strong woman thinks she _ought_ to do a thing, the ship of state may as well clear its decks for an encounter from all the guns hitherto known or unknown in moral combat. For he had learned that women are constitutionally brave as well as educationally timid, and that they set no limits to their daring when once they enter the lists to do the thing that must be done. After he was gone, Mrs. Mancredo stood watching Reginald’s happy, superintelligent look. Then— “What have you done to him and to us all?” she said. “It is as if—as if we were watching by the hallowed dead.”