“Oh, yes,” said Barbara, with a smile. “It doesn’t mean very much. Of course times are not what they were. Man used to be a demigod, now he is only a----” Barbara hesitated for a word, so I suggested, “Only a bank.” “Let us say only a man. Only a man in the eyes of reflective womanhood. We have caught up and are beginning to think for ourselves. You can’t expect us to hang on your every word and to fall down and worship you without reservation as we once did. Man used to be woman’s whole existence, often to her infinite sorrow, and now he is only part of it, just as she is only a part of his. You go to your clubs; we go to ours; and while you are playing cards we read or listen to papers, some of which are not intelligible to man. But we love you still, even though we have ceased to worship you. There are a few, I admit, who would like to do away with you altogether; but they are extremists--in every revolution, you know, there are fanatics and unreasonable persons--but the vast majority of us have a tender spot for you in our hearts, and regard your case in sorrow rather than in anger--and as probably not hopeless.” “What is the matter with us?” “Oh, everything. You are a failure fundamentally. To begin with, your theory of life is founded on compromise. We women--the modern woman--abhor compromise.” Although it was obvious that Barbara was trying to tease me, I realized from her expression that she intended to deal my sex a crucial stab by the word compromise. I must confess that I felt just a little uncomfortable under the white light of scorn which radiated from her eyes, while her general air reminded me for the first time disagreeably of the type of modern woman to whom I had referred. “The world progresses by compromise,” I replied, sententiously. “Yes, like a snail.” “Otherwise it would stand still. A man thinks so and so; another man thinks precisely opposite; they meet each other half-way and so much is gained.” “Oh, I know how they do. A man who stands for a principle meets another man; they argue and bluster for a few minutes, and presently they sit down and have something to eat or drink, and by the time they separate the man who stands for a principle has sacrificed all there is of it, except a tiny scrap or shred, in order not to incommode the man who has no principles at all; and what is almost worse, they part seemingly bosom friends and are apt to exchange rhetorical protestations of mutual esteem. The modern woman has no patience with such a way of doing things.” “I suppose,” said I, “that two modern women under similar circumstances would tear each other all to pieces; there would be nothing to eat or drink, except possibly tea and wafers, and the floor would be covered with fragments of skin, hair, and clothing. When they separated one would be dead and the other maimed for life, and the principle for which the victor stood would be set back about a century and a half.”