“You must not insist upon participation only as indicating popularity. Take the instance of golf, which few people actually play, but which is _the_ game all the same. I mean that in proportion to the number who do not marry there is less affirmative objection to marriage than in the past.” “I wish I knew how you make that out. But I am going to take this much from it, and you will correct me if I am wrong: Women are less likely to marry than formerly; but they are also less certain not to marry.” “Would it cheer you any to believe that?” “I do not insist upon being cheered. But I should like to know. I am weak enough to want to be confirmed in a belief which I have tried to formulate. You can see that matrimony might get some comfort out of it just as golf does. It might enjoy the flattery of being the greatest game even if every one doesn’t choose to play, even if certain charming women do choose to cover their emotions with a veil of sophistry as they cover their books with brown paper.” “And thou, Brutus!—after I had lifted the veil! I am very magnanimous. I play a talk game with you, and let you ask me impossible questions, label myself for you, uncover my dearest theories, deal mercifully with your syllogizing, and now I agree to your formula,—yes, and I take off my brown paper. What more could mortal woman do?” [Illustration] “Nothing more,” I said, staring at the lettering on the book, “nothing more, except tell me why on earth you are reading ‘Emma’?” She gave a little chuckle and shook her head. “That,” she said, “is the one thing you have asked that I can not answer.” [Illustration] [Illustration] III WITH A GYM GIRL [Illustration] There had been some mistake about the time, and she was there an hour ahead of the class, a circumstance which I had not the conscience to resent, for she said I might stay until the class came. Meanwhile we sat in the big, cool gymnasium, into which fell patches of spring sunlight that painted here the shining floor, and there striped the dangling lines of rope, falling finally into whimsical arabesques on the dumb-bell rack. It was a co-educational sort of gymnasium, as one might guess from the punching-bag and other devices, classes of men and women, boys and girls, alternating in possession, under the discipline of an academy. She herself wore a dark serge gym suit, that fascinating hybrid of skirt and bloomer, which unites the charm of drapery with the effect of the girded uniform. Sitting there thus well-dressed, lithe, poised, sufficient, with light in her eyes and blood in her lips, she presented a pleasing spectacle. Something in her association with all the paraphernalia of the vaulted gymnasium struck me as symbolizing the situation of her sex in the modern world. She seemed only prophetically adjusted to it all, and yet one could not but have the feeling that she would always know just what to leave alone.