"Why, I and my club, and other clubs like it," she concluded, "find the cause of our being in such things as this. We women haven't any occupation, and we haven't any husbands, essentially speaking--and we're determined to have both." The bold declaration was offensive to the old lady's sense of propriety. "You can't interfere with your husband's business, Cicily," she said by way of rebuke, somewhat stiffly. The young wife, however, was emancipated from such admonitions. She did not hesitate to express her dissent boldly. "Yes," she exclaimed indignantly, "that's the idea that you old married women have been putting up with, without ever whimpering. Why, you've even been preaching it yourselves--preaching it until you've spoilt the men utterly. So, now, thanks to your namby-pamby knuckling under always, it's business first, last, and all the time--and marriage just nowhere. I tell you, it's all wrong.... I know you're older," she went on vehemently, as Mrs. Delancy's lips parted. "I guess that's why you're wrong.... Anyhow, it isn't as it was intended. For the matter of that, which was first, marriage or business? Did Adam have a business when he married? Huh! There! No man could answer that!" Cicily paused in triumph, and, in the elation wrought by developing a successful argument, turned luminous eyes on her aunt, while her red lips bent into the daintiest of smiles. Mrs. Delancy was not to be beguiled from the fixed habits of thoughts carried through scores of years by the winsome blandishments of her whilom ward. She had no answering gentleness for the gladness in the girl's face. When she spoke, it was with an emphasis of acute disapproval: "Do you mean that you are going to make your husband choose between you and his business, Cicily?" Something in the tone disturbed the young wife's serenity. The direct question itself was sufficient to destroy the momentary equanimity evolved out of a mental achievement such as the argument from Adam. She realized, on the instant, that her desire must be defeated by the facts of life. "No," she admitted, after a brief period of hesitancy, "of course not. Charles chooses business first--any man would." The inexorable question followed: