“You have brought up the fundamental difference between the sexes. You men were ever slaves to tradition and your consistency on which you pride yourselves was after all only a servitude to a rooted idea which no longer served. There is woman’s superior mentality. We never ask is a thing right, but is it necessary. Your vanity made you believe you could foresee all future conditions. We simply say the present has no relation to the past, because new conditions and not old ones determine our decisions.” “I have heard such stuff before,” I said, irritated at my own lack of resource. For some reason Acquilla did not wish to further antagonize me. She took my hand tenderly and said: “I must make allowance for your man’s point of view, dear Bogardus. I don’t want to annoy you. I am simply comparing different viewpoints. After all, remember that life is the cheapest thing in the world and it matters little how or when we go. You will do us the justice as you see us, to realize that if we have not yet conquered death, we never permit suffering, and though we had to decimate the world to do it, we have produced a state where hunger, poverty, sickness and suffering are unknown. You are not angry with me, Bogardus,” she concluded, holding out her arms with a charming gesture. I yielded to the embrace but with a certain obstinacy which she must have felt, for she began to display the most tender solicitude to win me out of the stubbornness of my mood. “Dianne is dining with us tonight and bringing Dulcina, the great composer, and Carrilla, who plays divinely. You will see that the aesthetics of living has not been lost in our feminine age. Come, we’ll plan the dinner together and you shall order the banquet as the Epicures of your day would have done. There you men remain supreme.” I understood the reasons of her flattery, but was somewhat mollified by it. Yet as I took her hand and followed her to the culinary libraries, I was curiously conscious that in this scene I had behaved strangely like a woman and Acquilla had had all the masculine advantages. This irritated me and I resolved not to appear again at such a disadvantage. CHAPTER IX I had made no reference to my luncheon and I must admit that I was considerably perplexed as to what course to pursue. Due to the abrupt interruption of my tête-à-tête with Dianne, we had been unable to agree upon a story. Of Mag I felt reasonably sure, for to betray me would be to implicate herself, but what if Dianne herself should make a slip before I could warn her? However, my short experience with that fascinating person had revealed to me enough of the eternal feminine to trust to her ingenuity. My confidence was not misplaced for Dianne immediately on entering remarked: “My dear Acquilla, I should be a thousand miles away from here, but the opportunity to talk a second time to your strange visitor from another world was too tempting, even if I am going to quarrel with him over my interpretation.”