“Well, that’s finely finished, and I think we are to be congratulated on the success of our attempt at square dealing,” continued Robert. “But you know, Ethel, in the old days you and Daniel had some mysterious talisman by which you discovered if any _goddesses_ came to town in the Civil (?) War-time days, when so many unhappy babies were likely to be neglected. Other kinds than the goddess sort you seemed to think were material not worth your time and attention. I have thought of your way of discriminating then, in association with the amount of time which you blessed souls have since seen fit to give to that Reginald?” He put this in the form of a question, and Ethel said: “There is in Reginald ‘a little seed of immortal power, which will save its kind alive.’ Therefore he was especially worth saving. He will help progress toward conditions in which the ARTS OF PEACE will prosper. For this progress is dependent on the _intelligibility of the doings of dualized_—self-harmonized natures. _He_ will make such things intelligible when he gains equilibrium. “Bertha, now, is such an one. She has come up out of the scarth of great tribulation, and she has washed her robes white in the life-blood of her own bleeding heart, image as it is of the bleeding heart of the Mother of divine Humanity. She, the outraged, has become pitiful to him who crucified her and put her to open shame—a shame which she will never forget. And,” continued Ethel, after a strange pause, “which I should be sorry to see her forget. For such dealings with woman are not to be permitted nor condoned. Nevertheless, Reginald is worth saving, though he should not be encouraged, Mrs. Mancredo, to suppose Bertha will have anything more to say to him than to—” “What, Miss Ethel, do you really mean that you women are going to conspire to make all other women leave us men alone in peace?” said Reginald, walking out from his secluded chair in the corner behind the portières, where he had half relapsed into his old fashion of floating away into union with _reflective agencies_. “Do you mean,” he repeated stumblingly, as he came into their circle, “Do you mean that women are to be taught somehow to leave us men to mind our business? We men are dead tired of women, all of us; but we can’t really get rid of them. We often feel like shrieking out at women: ‘For heaven’s sake, take yourselves out of sight and hearing for a thousand years. Get out of our light, and give us a chance to find _ourselves_!’ “They take too much out of our self-esteem when they tell the truth; and when they don’t, they take too much out of our esteem for _them_, which is worse yet, for our comfort. We know there is something wrong about us, but as we don’t quite understand ourselves, of course we can’t make them understand us. The reason I want to shriek out at them is—well—it is queer, but it is because I like _them so much_.” Robert laughed out, as if he had a fellow feeling for Reginald in this difficulty.