That was the perfect thing, Milly thought, forgetting that she had once tried this plan with disastrous results and had returned to the allowance system with relief. Most men, she felt, were tyrannical and arbitrary by nature, especially in money matters, or as she sometimes called her husband,--"Turks." She often discussed the relation of the sexes in marriage with Hazel Fredericks, who had "modern" views and leant her books on the woman movement and suffrage. Although she instinctively disliked "strong-minded women," she felt there was great injustice in the present situation between men and women. "It is a man's-world," became one of her favorite axioms. She could not deny that her husband was kind,--she often boasted of his generosity to her friends,--and she knew that he spent very little on his own pleasures: whatever there was the family had it. But it always humiliated her to go to him for money, when she was behind, and in his sterner moods try to coax it from him. This was the way women had always been forced to do with their masters, and it was, of course, all wrong: it classed the wife with "horrid" women, who made men pay them for their complaisance. Ideas on all these subjects were in the air: all the women Milly knew talked of the "dawn of the woman era," the coming emancipation of the sex from its world-old degradation. Milly vaguely believed it would mean that every woman should have her own check-book and not be accountable to any man for what she chose to spend. She amplified this point of view to Reinhard, who liked "the little Bragdons" and often came to their new home. Milly especially amused him in his rôle of student of the coming sex. He liked to see her experiment with ideas and mischievously encouraged her "revolt" as he called it. They had tea together, took walks in the Park, and sometimes went to concerts. He was very kind to them both, and Milly regarded him as their most influential friend. She felt that the novelist would make a very good husband, understanding as he did so thoroughly the woman's point of view. "I'm not a 'new woman,' of course," Milly always concluded her discourse. "Of course you're not!" the novelist heartily concurred. "That's why you are so interesting,--you represent an almost extinct species,--just woman." "I know I'm old-fashioned--Hazel always says so. I believe in men doing the voting and all that. Women should not try to be like men--their strength is their difference!" "You want just to be Queen?" Reinhard suggested. "Oh," Milly sighed, "I want what every woman wants--just to be loved." She implied that with the perfect love, all these minor difficulties would adjust themselves easily. But the woman without love must fight for her "rights," whatever they were. "Oh, of course," the novelist murmured sympathetically. In all his varied experience with the sex he had found few women who would admit that they were properly loved. * * * * *