While the plan for his new work was by no means settled yet, beyond doubt this matter of Miss Trevenna had given strong impetus to the conservative wave. And meanwhile, there was the personal side. To lecture Mary Wing openly was a thing scarcely to be thought of. Yet, having felt the unmistakable reactions himself, the young man found himself itching, literally itching, to get his hands on Mary and make her react a little, too. He said in his pleasantest way:--"Did it ever strike you, by the way, that she's got the propaganda in the purely archaic form?" "Archaic?--Hodger!" "She still imagines that the object of this Movement is to make women more like men. Of course, the object of the Movement is to make women more like themselves." Her silence seemed to applaud his epigram. Charles felt that it was generous of him to add: "I bagged that somewhere. Sounds like Havelock Ellis to me. But," he added, frankly, "I've improved the wording. Why do you say I'm unjust to her? On the contrary, I'd be delighted to fork over all those rights of hers she was demanding the other night. By the by, what are Hodger's rights exactly?" "I suppose she's entitled to human rights, even if you, as a man, don't find her especially attractive." Charles winced, and then smiled faintly. "Human rights--security and protection, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? She's got them, hasn't she? I thought what Hodger was yelling for was special privileges, rather exceptional privileges in the way of freeing her Ego from--" "As a woman, she hasn't even all the human rights, you know very well. As a human being, she would feel that she's entitled to exceptional rights, because she's an exceptional being. She would take the ground that her public work--" "She would take that ground, of course. But," said Charles, amiably, "possibly others would not agree with her. That is just the trouble, isn't it? The doctrine that the world belongs to Exceptional People has that fatal weakness." "In your opinion," she qualified him--"what?" "We'd need a great board, a sort of Super-Supreme Court of really godlike understanding, to tell us which are the Exceptional People." Seeing that he had her temporarily at a loss, Charles continued his agreeable prattle:-- "And hand them out their little certificates, you know. I remember, this chap Chesterton said a fairly bright thing once--a little piece I read somewhere. He said he'd always wanted to hear somebody--anybody--preach 'personal liberty' with one small qualification. Said he'd waited and waited to hear one person state the creed something like this: 'Men and women of genius must not be bound by ordinary laws. But I am NOT a man of genius, and therefore I will keep the law.' Chesterton said he'd been waiting for years." He was aware that Miss Wing was regarding him in a curious sort of way, and now she said, directly:-- "Do you know, this doesn't sound like you at all?"