"Well, so I said to Wilkins, as a matter of fact, with my nose in the air, on your behalf, and Wilkins replied, 'Oh, it's all very well while girls are young and good-looking to be so high and mighty, but some day, when they are left out in the cold, and all their friends married, they may sing a different tune.' Feeling there was something in this remark," Fred continued, "I raised my nose two inches higher, and adopted the argument that _I_ also resort to _in extremis_. I laughed. 'Well, my dear fellow,' Wilkins observed calmly, 'I mean no offence, but what on earth is a girl to do with herself if she _doesn't_ marry?'" "What did you reply?" asked Ernest with curiosity. "Oh, I said that was an unimportant detail, and changed the subject." Algitha was still scornful, but Hadria looked meditative. "Harold Wilkins has a practical mind," she observed. "After all, he is right, when you come to consider it." "_Hadria!_" remonstrated her sister, in dismay. "We may as well be candid," said Hadria. "There _is_ uncommonly little that a girl can do (or rather that people will let her do) unless she marries, and that is why she so often does marry as a mere matter of business. But I wish Harold Wilkins would remember that fact, instead of insisting that it is our inherent and particular nature that urges us, one and all, to the career of Mrs. Gordon." Algitha was obviously growing more and more ruffled. Fred tried in vain to soothe her feelings. He joked, but she refused to see the point. She would not admit that Harold Wilkins had facts on his side. "If one simply made up one's mind to walk through all the hampering circumstances, who or what could stop one?" she asked. "Algitha has evidently got some desperate plan in her head for making mincemeat of circumstances," cried Fred, little guessing that he had stated the exact truth. "Do you remember that Mrs. Gordon herself waged a losing battle in early days, incredible as it may appear?" asked Hadria. Algitha nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on the ground. "She did not originally set out with the idea of being a sort of amiable cow. She once aspired to be quite human; she really did, poor thing!" "Then why didn't she do it?" asked Algitha contemptuously. "Instead of _doing_ a thing, she had to be perpetually struggling for the chance to do it, which she never achieved, and so she was submerged. That seems to be the fatality in a woman's life." "Well, there is one thing I am very sure of," announced Algitha, leaning majestically against a column of the temple, and looking like a beautiful Greek maiden, in her simple gown, "I do not intend to be a cow. I do not mean to fight a losing battle. I will not wait at home meekly, till some fool holds out his sceptre to me." All eyes turned to her, in astonishment.