"Oh, remember that we have ideals!" Ruth Howard remonstrated, with sincere, if vague, adherence to her ideals; and she up-turned her great eyes toward the ceiling. Mrs. Flynn, curiously enough, was opposed to the idealist in this instance. "Yes," she said, "I fear that it's quite true. The professional working woman thinks more of her salary and a comfortable living than of our great cause." Cicily herself disposed of the matter with a blithesome nonchalance that was beautiful to behold. "Oh, don't bother," was her way of cutting the Gordian knot. "I'll make my husband's stenographer do the work." "I move that we adjourn," the militant suffragette repeated in a most businesslike manner. Mrs. Carrington was determined that her rival should not outdistance her at the finish. She spoke with her most forcible dignity: "I second the motion." The motion was put and carried.... Thus ended the first session of that epoch-marking organization: The Civitas Society for the Uplift of Woman and for Encouraging the Spread of Social Equality among the Masses. CHAPTER II Cicily Hamilton, bride of a year, was seemingly as fortunate a young woman as the city of New York could offer to an envious world. Her house in the East Sixties, just off the Avenue, was a charming home, dainty, luxurious, in the best of taste, with a certain individuality in its arrangement and ornamentation that spoke agreeably of the personality of its mistress. Her husband, Charles Hamilton, was a handsome man of twenty-six, who adored his wife, although recently, in the months since the waning of the honeymoon, he had been so absorbed in business cares that he had rather neglected those acts of tenderness so vital to a woman's happiness. Some difficulties that disturbed him downtown rendered him often preoccupied when at home, and the effect on his wife was unwholesome. Little by little, the girl-woman felt a certain discontent growing within her, indeterminate in a great measure, but none the less forceful in its influence on her moods day by day.