This was a new idea for Matilda. She had always been too loyal to dream of turning her eye in the direction of one whom she regarded as exclusively her sister's property. She bridled a little--the picture was so glorious--if it only could be hers! Charlie Prodgers who scorned to be seen in anything but a frock coat, unless, of course, he went golfing--Charlie Prodgers who each Sunday attended the church parade in Hyde Park as a matter of course! But would he ever look at her? Proud, haughty fellow! and she not so pretty as Katherine--and not half so nobby as Gladys. But stranger things than that happened in her serials, and she need not feel that it was quite hopeless. But how could Kitten willingly relinquish such triumph? There must be something of a suffragette in her after all, since no girl in her senses could ask more of fortune! The Sunday was spent by Katherine in packing up all her belongings and in selecting the books she meant to take with her, a volume or two of Voltaire, Bacon's Essays, Kant and Bergson, and a new acquisition, Otto Weininger's "Sex and Character." This latter had interested her deeply. There was a great deal of biting truth in his analysis of women, and it was probably also true that they did not possess souls; but she totally disagreed with his ending of the matter that the solution of the problem lay in a voluntary annihilation of the human species through abstinence from procreation. She, for her part, thought that it was taking things out of the Hand of God, or the Divine Essence, or whatever the great Principle should be called--and her eminently practical mind failed to see the use of such far-reaching speculations. "The poor man was mad, of course," she said, as she closed the book again before packing it. "But I will try to watch the feminine traits in myself and crush them. He has taught me that amount, in any case. And if I have no soul, I have a brain and a will, and so I am going to obtain as much as a woman can get with those two things. As for the infinite, men are welcome to that, as far as I am concerned!" She looked forward with deep interest to perusing the story with _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ in it. What could it be about? She had hardly thought that Lord Algy had read at all, he never spoke of books--but it was perhaps not surprising; they had been always too occupied in more agreeable converse. How good it was to remember all that, even though never in her life she should have such foolish sweetness again!