"Yes; Mrs. Hamilton is right," was her caustic comment. "We are forgetting our great work--the emancipation of woman!" Cicily beamed approval on the speaker; but she inverted the other's phrase: "Yes," she agreed, "our great work--the subjugation of man!" The statement was not, however, allowed to go unchallenged. Helen Johnson, who was well along in the twenties at least, and still a spinster, prided herself on her powers of conquest, despite the fact that she had no husband to show for it. So, now, she spoke with an air of languid superiority: "Oh, we've already accomplished the subjugation of man," she drawled, and smiled complacently. "Some of us have," Cicily retorted; and the accent on the first word pointed the allusion. "Oh, hush, dear!" The chiding whisper came from Mrs. Delancy, a gray-haired woman of sixty-five, somewhat inclined to stoutness and having a handsome, kindly face. She was the aunt of Cicily, and had reared the motherless girl in her New York home. Now, on a visit to her niece, the bride of a year, she found herself inevitably involved in the somewhat turbulent session of the Civitas Club, with which as yet she enjoyed no great amount of sympathy. Her position in the chair nearest the presiding officer gave her opportunity to voice the rebuke without being overheard by anyone save the militant Mrs. Flynn, who smiled covertly. Cicily bent forward, and spoke softly to her aunt's ear: "I just had to say it, auntie," she avowed happily. "You know, she tried her hardest to catch Charles." Mrs. Morton, a middle-aged society woman, who displayed sporadic interest in the cause of woman during the dull season, now rose from the chair immediately behind Mrs. Flynn, and spoke with a tone of great decisiveness: "Yes, ladies of the Civitas Club, Mrs. Flynn is perfectly right." She indicated the identity of the militant suffragette, who was a stranger to most of those in the company, by a sweeping gesture. "It is our duty to follow firmly on the path which our sister has indicated toward the emancipation of woman. We should get the club started at once, and the work done immediately. Lent will be over soon, and then there will be no time for it." "Yes, indeed," Cicily agreed enthusiastically, as Mrs. Morton again subsided into her chair; "let's get the club going right away." The presiding officer hesitated for a moment, fumbling among the papers on the table. "What's the name--? Oh, here it is!" she concluded, lifting a sheet from the litter before her. "Listen! It's the Civitas Society for the Uplift of Woman and for Encouraging the Spread of Social Equality among the Masses." As this gratifyingly sonorous designation was enunciated by Cicily in her most impressive voice, the members of the club straightened in their places with obvious pride, and there was a burst of hand-clapping. Ruth Howard's great eyes rolled delightedly.