"Let's face the facts about Dorothy without prejudice," she said. "First, I know she's mixed up with perfectly impossible people, but you mustn't forget that she was with us at the McGrath. Her work's impossible too, poor dear Dot, but search where you will, Cosimo, you won't find a better _appreciator_ than she is. It would only need a little encouragement of that side of her nature and a little suppression of the other and Dorothy would be an almost ideal wife for an advanced and fine-thinking man. It's merely her Environment that doesn't give her a chance. Of course, from the point of view of Eugenics, those people of hers may be a little _epuisées_; intermarried too much: but she doesn't show it--she may be a throw-back. And it isn't a drawback any longer that Dorothy's rather fond of her own way. Equality of Opportunity is admitted nowadays, and in another ten years the conception of woman as property will be quite dead. And think how much worse you might do, Cosimo! Suppose you got hold of a mere doll!... Cosimo," she added earnestly, "it would be--hell!" Cosimo quailed inwardly, nor could he, in the face of Amory's earnestness, dissemble his quailing with a laugh. "But," he protested by and by, "I--I don't _want_ Dorothy, Amory!" "I only ask you to ask yourself whether that isn't an _idée fixe_." "I really don't think it's an _idée fixe_," Cosimo returned, after further examination of it. "And besides, _you've_ rather spoiled me for the companionship of--of anybody who comes along----" "It has been beautiful," said Amory, with a detached air, "and it will be more beautiful still to look back on. I don't conceal from you, Cosimo, that quite the most precious and significant part of my life has been shared with you." He broke out almost angrily--"The past tense again, Amory! Really, I--I don't know what's come over you!" "You mean that you'd miss me a little too?" "Miss you!----" This time he did give a little mirthless laugh. "Then," Amory went on presently, "there's something else to remember. Dorothy's used to me. We are friends. Another girl might not be. You see how much I care who you marry, Cosimo, and why." "But--but--whatever's put it into your head that I want to marry at all?" Cosimo cried, stopping and looking blankly at her. She, too, looked at him; then she moved slowly forward again. "Ah, you're at the very heart of the feminist Movement there, if you only knew it, Cosimo," she replied. "A man has only his intelligence; a woman has intelligence _and_ her intuitions as well." "You mean you've an intuition I want to get married?" Cosimo broke out. "I swear----" "Oh, Cosimo, what's the good of swearing? That's merely like that antiquated old Service again, when you promise to love and honour and all the time you're absolutely in the dark. You may not want to at this moment. But you don't know that to-morrow somebody may not want to marry you. I only want it to be the right person--chum of mine," she added softly.