"Say, Milt," speculated Stone in his most aggressively malicious manner, "whenever I look at a fresh-colored young priest like you, I don't wonder that the girls swarm about you like flies in a molasses cask. Your purity is written in your eyes. It oozes from your expression. It's an aura. The female ever in pursuit of masculine honey feels this, and you are her idol, as is, in a different fashion, a tenor." Milt protested. Paul suddenly lost his head, crying: "Woman is the split-infinitive in the grammar of life," which was capped by Bell: "Woman is an ecstasy-breeding machine." "I hate speeches beginning with--Woman is this, woman is that," proclaimed Ulick. "When men foregather and booze they suddenly land in that bohemia of dead-sea fruit, the woman question. Women are human like men, and the little difference"--"Bless de Lawd fer de difference, as the darky preacher said--" It was the thick voice of Bell--"is the cause for the lot of rotten talk and theorizing." "Bravo, Ulick"! said Milt, with sentimental vehemence. "Faire remonter tout son sexe dans son cerveau," he added. But Stone was curious. "I'd like to know the trick of that sex-transposition. Women are a nuisance--sometimes; often I should like to do without them; but I acknowledge I can't. What's the method, Milt, camphor or prayer"? Milt, scandalized, didn't reply. To break the embarrassing silence Ulick turned to Paul and asked him if he knew anything new. "Oh, yes, Marie, the singing comedienne, had just had a row with her last husband. You know that fastidious baronet of hers who wears a bangle on his ankle. The other night at Lady Murchison's dinner I sat next to her. I wished to be friendly so I asked how she was getting along with her young man. "Oh nicely," she said, with that dazzling Celtic smile, "we never quarrel unless we fall in love with the same man." A roar followed. Milt groaned.