"You sweet duckling!" she exclaimed turning to Mona and embracing her energetically, "what will you ever know of the submerged lives about you? You were reared in cotton-wool and have been spared the sight of such agonizing." Mona shivered, and timidly returned the embrace. The three young men exchanged glances. Suddenly Easter took a new tack. "Jewel," she said meditatively regarding him, "Jewel, why don't you write a novel?" "Good heavens, old girl, I have hardly the energy to pencil my allotted newspaper paragraphs. Novels nowadays mean either the naked truth and that spells disaster, or slimy sensual sentimentality. Your heroine to make an impression, must resist seduction, though longing for carnal satisfaction; or, if she happens to be a professional prostitute--led from the sloppy paths of a still sloppier virtue when very young--then she must be converted in the limelight to the sound of pharasaical trumpets. The chief thing is to combine voluptuous description with hypocritical repentance. To dissect the sex emotions calmly is the one unforgivable offence. Foam at the mouth, you may, in presenting the details of nymphomania or satyriasis, if you only piously turn up your eyes at the close. Sex is as sane, as clean as any other physical function; in fact, it's cleaner. Eating, drinking, and digestion are not particularly attractive. Fornication, conception, child-bearing are natural. Treat them naturally. Don't slop over them. Don't tell about blasted lives, blackened souls, because your heroine assumes a horizontal attitude and sees the moon over the shoulder of her lover. Don't gasbag about sin, when the sexual act is no more sinful than eating. Good God! how long are the emasculated ideals of ancient Asiatic fanatics to check the free exercise of a woman's nature? Calling a natural process like copulation a sin doesn't make it so. I am a feminist, as you girls know, but I don't give a rap for the suffrage if it doesn't free woman from her sexual slavery. If a man can run around, having a good time, and not be reproached with his loose-living, why, by the same token, can't a woman?" He was unusually animated. "Bravo Ulick!" cried Easter. Mona shivered again. She knew. Paul giggled; when in doubt he always giggled, but he was thoroughly shocked by Ulick's banal defence of immorality. Alfred shook his head; he, too, knew the mainspring of this verbiage. "Ulick, my lad, you write your novels in the air. You will never publish one. You are 'veule' as they in your beloved language and 'veule' means something more than soft or weak. The truth is--" "Alfred and his truths," sniffed Easter --"is Ulick, you are rotten, morally rotten. Even your not drinking or smoking is only cowardice. Back to the boulevards for you!"