"Women with homes have gone into the world to earn some extra pocket money until they've knocked the bottom out of all wage systems, and you never can make the wildest among them see that women can't expect men's pay unless they do men's work. A man's work is only half of it in business, the other half is supporting a family. Women want equal pay and to spend the result as they please. The man's wages go usually on bread and the woman's on bonnets, to speak broadly. He goes to his own home at night and has every single bill for four to ten people. She goes to somebody else's house and has only her own needs to face, with perhaps some contribution towards those off somewhere." "Dear me," said Emily, "I never thought of that." "No," said Lorenzo, snapping the lid of his color box shut, "women don't think of that. But men do." "But surely there are loads and loads of women who do support families." "Yes, and who are dragged down by the injustice of what economists call 'The Law of Supplemented Earnings'!" Emily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was not exactly what she had anticipated. It certainly was in no way romantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had taken a horrid twist away from what she had intended. "You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?" she said. "You don't sympathize with the modern trend?" "I sympathize with nature and human nature," said Lorenzo, "but not with civilization." He rose to his feet. "Oh, Mr. Rath!" she looked upward, expecting to be assisted to rise. "I believe in life, lived by live things in the way God meant. I loathe this modern institution limping along with its burden of carefully fed and tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I were a Zulu." "Good Heavens!" "Come," said the man, picking up his load, "we can go now." "Had you finished?" She scrambled to her feet. "I'd done all that I could under the circumstances." "I suppose the light changes so fast at this time...." Emily was quite unsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in women was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what her presence meant to the unhappy artist. "Come, come," he repeated impatiently. They walked away then through the pretty winding lane. "It seems to me so awful that we are all so hopeless," Emily went on presently. "We are all put here and often see just what should be done and can't do it possibly." "I do exactly what I choose," said Lorenzo,--then he added: "as a usual thing." "You must be very happy." She paused. "I suppose that you have plenty of money to live as you please." "I'm fortunate enough not to have any." "Goodness!" the exclamation was sincere. The shock to Emily was dreadful. "Why do you call that fortunate?" she asked, after a little hasty agony of downfall as to rich and generous travel, spaced off by going to the theater.