"Women have not the same kind of intelligence as men," she began, "because it is denied to them by their physical constitution. But they have, I insist, a supplementary intelligence without which the great masculine minds would be as ineffective as convulsions of nature. Women work like the coral polyps...." "Bravo!" John cried. "A capital comparison!" "An absurd comparison!" James contradicted. "A ludicrous comparison! Woman is purely individualistic. The moment she begins to take up with communal effort, she tends to become sterile." "Do get on with your supper, dear," urged Beatrice, who had only understood the last word and was anxious not "to be made to feel small," as she would have put it, in front of an unmarried woman. John perceived her mortification and jumped through the argument as a clown through a paper hoop. "Remember I'm expecting you both at Ambles on Christmas Eve," he said, boisterously. "We're going to have a real old-fashioned Christmas party." James forgot all about women in his indignation; but before he could express his opinion Beatrice held up another paper hoop for the distraction of the audience. "I'm simply longin' for the country," she declared. "Christmas with a lot of children is the nicest thing I know." John went through the hoop with aplomb and refused to be unseated by his brother. "James will enjoy it more than any of us," he chuckled. "What!" shouted the critic. "I'd sooner be wrecked on a desert island with nothing to read but a sixpenny edition of the Christmas Carol. Ugh!" John looked at Miss Hamilton again, and this time his appeal was not unheeded; she said no more about women and let James rail on at sentimental festivities, which, by the time he had finished with them, looked as irreparable as the remains of the tipsy-cake. There seemed no reason amid the universal collapse of tradition to conserve the habit of letting the ladies retire after dinner. As there was no drawing-room in his bachelor household, it would have been more comfortable to smoke upstairs in the library; but James returned to Fielding after demolishing Dickens and protested against being made to hurry over his port; so his host had to watch Beatrice escort Miss Hamilton from the dining-room with considerable resentment at what he thought was her unjustifiably protective manner. "As my secretary," he felt, "Miss Hamilton is more at home in my house than Beatrice is. I suppose, though, that like everything else I have my relations are going to take possession of her now." "Where did you pick up your lady-help?" James asked, when he and his brother were left alone with the wine. "If you're alluding to Miss Hamilton," John said, sharply, "I met her on board the _Murmania_, crossing the Atlantic." "I never heard any good come of traveling acquaintances. She has a good complexion; I suppose she took your eye by not being seasick. Beware of women with good complexions who aren't seasick, Johnnie. They always flirt."