There was silence among us, which to me in the intensity of my feelings seemed to last for minutes. Regan was the first to speak. “Now, Mrs. St. Quinten,” he said, “it all rests with you.” An idea shot across my mind at the moment, of the folly of which we had been guilty in placing our most vital interests in the hands of a woman merely on the score of gallantry. Two votes had been given to her as against one of ours simply because,--she was a woman. It may be that there had been something in the arrangement of compensation for the tea and muffins; but if so, how poor was the cause for so great an effect! She sat there the arbiter of our destinies. “You had better give your vote,” said Smith roughly. “You think it is a novel?” she said, appealing to him. “There can be no doubt of it,” he replied; “a novel is not a novel because it is long or short. Such is the matter which we intended to declare that we would not put forth in our magazine.” “I protest,” said I, jumping up,--“I protest against this interference.” Then there was a loud and very angry discussion whether Churchill Smith was justified in his endeavour to bias Mrs. St. Quinten; and we were nearly brought to a vote upon that. I myself was very anxious to have that question decided,--to have any question decided in which Churchill Smith could be shown to be in the wrong. But no one would back me, and it seemed to me as though even Regan and Jack Hallam were falling off from me,--though Jack had never yet restored to me that article of clothing to which allusion was made in the first chapter of this little history, and I had been almost as anxious for Pat’s Latin translation as for my own production. It was decided without a vote that any amount of free questioning as to each other’s opinions, and of free answering, was to be considered fair. “I tell her my opinion. You can tell her yours,” said Churchill Smith. “It is my opinion,” said I, “that you want to dictate to everybody and to rule the whole thing.” “I think we did mean to exclude all story-telling,” said Mrs. St. Quinten, and so the decision was given against me.