"Tonight I had a long talk with Kendall Brown on the same old subject--_what is a woman to do who longs for the companionship of a man, but does not find it?_ "Kendall always says disconcerting things, he is brutally frank; but I like to argue with him because I find him stimulating, and he does know a lot about life. "'The trouble with women like you, Pen,' he said, 'is that you are not honest with yourselves. You pretend one thing and end by doing something quite different; then you say that you never intended to do this thing. Why can't you be consistent?' "'Like men?' "'Well, at least men know what they are going after, and when they have done a certain thing, they don't waste time regretting it or insisting that they meant to do something else.' "'You think women are hypocrites?' "'Yes.' "'If women are hypocrites, if women are afraid to tell the truth about sentimental things, it is because you men have made them so,' I replied with feeling. "Kendall answered good-naturedly that he held no brief for his own sex, he acknowledged that men treat women abominably--lie to them, abandon them, and so on; but he kept to his point that women create many of their troubles by drifting back and forth aimlessly on the changing tide of their emotions instead of establishing some definite goal for their lives. "'Women yield to every sentimental impulse--that is why they weep so easily. Watch them at a murder trial--they weep for the victim, then they weep for the murderer. Half their tears are useless. If women would put into constructive thinking some of the vital power they waste in weeping and talking they could revolutionize the world.' "'Could they reform the men?' I retorted, but when he tried to answer I stopped him. What was the use? I knew what he would say about this, and I really wanted to get his ideas on the other point. "'Come back to the question,' I said. 'Take the case of a well-bred woman surrounded by stifling, conventional influences of family and friends, who sees lonely years slipping by while nothing comes that satisfies her womanhood. She may have money enough, comforts, even luxuries, but she longs for the companionship of a man. What is she to do?' "He answered with his usual positiveness: "'She must take the initiative. She must go after what she supremely wants, just as a man would, using her power--I assume that she is reasonably attractive. She must break through restraints, and drive ahead towards the particular kind of emotional happiness that suits her. That is what God created her for, to achieve by her own efforts this emotional happiness. If she wants it enough she can get it. We can all of us do anything, have anything on condition that we want it enough to pay the price for it. The price is usually the elimination of other things that interfere.' "'Suppose a woman wants a husband? Suppose she is forty--and not rich? Do you mean to say she can get a husband?'