men train for the wretched business of killing each other. They will not mate with those poor things--modern men--under the existing marriage laws. They refuse to be household beasts of burden a day longer. Life, life to the dregs with all its joys and all its responsibilities, is what they want, and love if it comes their way. But not marriage. Young Siegfrieds they ask for, young lions. Here one bewildered reader rubbed her eyes; for she had just heard Siegfried and the Götterdämmerung again, and sometimes she reads in the _Nibelungenlied_; and if ever a man won a woman with his club, by muscle seemingly, by magic really, but anyhow by sheer bodily strength, was not that man Siegfried? and was not the woman Brünnhilde? And what does the Siegfried of the Lied say when his wife has failed to keep a guard on her tongue-- "Man soll so Frauen ziehen," sprach Siegfried, "der Degen, Das sie üppig Reden lassen unterwegen. Verbiet es deinem Weibe; der meinen thu' ich's auch. Ich schäme mich, wahrlich um solchen übermüthigen Brauch." And then, just as if he was one of those Volga-Kalmucks admired by Herr Riehl, he beats poor Kriemhilde black and blue. "Das hat mich bald gereuet," so sprach das edle Weib; "Auch hat er so zerblaüet deswegen meinen Leib! Dass ich es je geredet, beschwerte ihm den Muth: Das hat gar wohl gerochen der Degen tapfer und gut." Yet here is the last development in women, the woman who refuses as an outrage both the theory of masculine superiority and the fact so evident in Germany of masculine domination, here is the self-constituted superwoman calling as if she was Eve to the primæval male. It may be perverse of me, but my imagination refuses to behold them mated. CHAPTER VIII THE OLD AND THE NEW