"But this isn't an ordinary lecture. In fact, I shouldn't have used that word at all. It's a talk, a personal talk to women by a woman, and a wonderful one--Dr. Jane Rainey. You may have heard of her?" "Well, I'm not sure. What is she going to talk about?" asked Angela politely. "The subject that means most to every woman, no matter what she thinks or says! And Dr. Rainey, I do believe, knows more about it than anybody else living. Jane Clemm she was--but that was years ago, before you could remember. I got her to come here to speak, myself,--and expect to lose some money on the transaction, too,--heigho! But I don't mind really, it's such a privilege to have the whole subject lit up, from the modern point of view, by a speaker like this. Jane Rainey's a practicing physician, a fine human being, the mother of four children herself, and she--" "But what _is_ her subject, Cousin Mary?" "That's it!--marriage and motherhood." Angela stared at her cousin, and then looked rather shocked. Next, faint color appeared in her smooth cheeks. It really seemed that Mary had learned nothing, from the painful lesson she had just received. Why did she have this persistent interest in the unpleasant side of life? She said more decisively than was her wont: "No, Cousin Mary, I really don't think I'd care to go--thank you." Mary Wing, checked in her forensic by Angela's expression, looked surprised, though, perhaps, not taken aback, and certainly not rebuked. "Now, why not? I honestly hoped the subject would have a special interest for you. You--" "For me!--Oh, no! I--" "My dear, you know you told me once what your ambition was--to be a good wife some day, when the right man came for you. And that's the ambition of every normal woman, I believe,--or one of them,--no matter what else she may have in her head! Well, you see, that's exactly what this brilliant student--and woman--wants to advise us about--how to fulfill this ambition; how to prepare ourselves to be good wives and--" "But I don't think of it that way at all, Cousin Mary. I hope," said Angela, pink-cheeked, but once more standing firm for propriety against all the astonishing Newness--"I hope I'll know how to be a good wife--to the man I love--without going to any lectures--" "Do you think anybody on earth knows as much as that, just by intuition? It seems to me ... But perhaps your feeling is--you don't like the idea of a public talk on the subject?" "I don't, Cousin Mary--frankly. I know I seem to you dreadfully behind the times--and all. But that's the way I was brought up to feel, and it's the way I do feel. I'm not advanced at all, I thought you knew." There was a silence in the dingy little parlor, during which the pouring rain became audible.