_Madame_ is already shaking herself like a wet hen. But yes, my dear! we are both subjects. And as subjects, we enjoy a lovely equality, liberty, my dear! Equality! Fraternity or Sorority! my dear! Aren’t you pleased? But it’s no use talking to a wet hen. That “subject” was a cold douche. As subjects, men and women may be equal. But as objects, it’s another pair of shoes. Where, I ask you, is the equality between an arrow and a horseshoe? or a serpent and a squash-blossom? Find me the equation that equates the cock and the hen. You can’t. As inhabitants of my backyard, as loyal subjects of my _rancho_, they, the cock and the hen, are equal. When he gets wheat, she gets wheat. When sour milk is put out, it is as much for him as for her. She is just as free to go where she likes, as he is. And if she likes to crow at sunrise, she may. There is no law against it. And he can lay an egg, if the fit takes him. Absolutely nothing forbids. Isn’t that equality? If it isn’t, what is? Even then, they’re two very different objects. As equals, they are just a couple of barnyard fowls, clucking! generalised! But dear me, when he comes prancing up with his red beard shaking, and his eye gleaming, and she comes slowly pottering after, with her nose to the ground, they’re two very different objects. You never think of equality: or of inequality, for that matter. They’re a cock and a hen, and you accept them as such. You don’t think of them as equals, or as unequals. But you think of them _together_. Wherein, then, lies the togetherness? Would you call it love? I wouldn’t. Their two egos are absolutely separate. He’s a cock, she’s a hen. He never thinks of her for a moment, as if she were a cock like himself; and she never thinks for a moment that he is a hen like herself. I never hear anything in her squawk which would seem to say: “_Aren’t I a fowl as much as you are, you brute!_” Whereas I always hear women shrieking at their men: “Aren’t I a human being as much as you are?” It seems beside the point. I always answer my spouse, with sweet reasonableness: “My dear, we are both British Subjects. What can I say more, on the score of equality? You are a British Subject as much as I am.” Curiously, she hates to have it put that way. She wants to be a human being as much as I am. But absolutely and honestly, I don’t know what a human-being is. Whereas I do know what a British Subject is. It can be defined. And I can see how a _Civis Romanum_, or a British Subject can be free, whether it’s he or she. The he-ness or the she-ness doesn’t matter. But how a _man_ can consider himself free, I don’t know. Any more than a cock-robin or a dandelion. Imagine a dandelion suddenly hissing: “_I am free and I will be free!_” Then wriggling on his root like a snake with his tail pegged down! What a horrifying sight!