Mayne lifted his head. “She has never mentioned the subject to me,” he answered, shortly. “I was only thinking of her as I knew her, five or six years ago. She was considered--well--rather brilliant, in those days. Does she write now?” The question was put suddenly. “Not that I know of,” Kingslake answered, absently. Mayne glanced at him with a curious expression. He wondered whether he was aware of the illuminating quality of his indifferent reply. Did he know what a milestone he had pointed out in the matrimonial road? “Women don’t really care a snap of the fingers about art,” Robert went on, with confidential fluency. “Matrimony is the goal of their ambition; that once attained, they sit ever afterwards serenely on the shore, watching the struggles of the rest of their sex towards the same haven.” A magazine was lying on the bench--one of the Quarterlies. Mayne fluttered the leaves with a smile. “Mrs. Kingslake left this here,” he said. “I envy you your power of detachment when you write articles, Kingslake. _A Vindication of Woman’s Claim in Art_, by Fergus Macdonald. That’s your writing name, isn’t it? I seem to be turning your own weapons against you with horrid frequency. I’m sorry,” he laughed again. “You misunderstand me!” protested Robert. “Didn’t I say ‘the women who marry’? I meant to. What I said doesn’t apply to the women nowadays who don’t marry--have no wish to marry. That such women may be artists, actual or potential, I have no doubt. When a woman is not preoccupied with the affairs of sex----” “She’s generally wanting to be.” Kingslake stopped short in his harangue, and looked at the other man doubtfully. “You take a cynical view,” he said. “No. Merely a natural one.” “You don’t believe that some women deliberately put love out of their lives?” asked Robert, tentatively. “My dear chap, love never gives some women a chance to be so rude.” “I don’t mean that. I mean the sort of woman who _has_ a chance.” “She’d take it.” Kingslake regarded him with a curious expression for a moment; there was a look of dawning hope in his face, a half smile of pleased expectancy. Then it faded, and he resumed his former slightly sententious manner. “My dear Mayne,” he replied, “you’ve been out in the wilds for some years. You can’t be expected to know the spirit of the times. You don’t understand the modern woman.” “My dear Kingslake,” returned Mayne, with great deliberation, “if I’d been out in the wilds, as you say, for fifty instead of five years, I should still disbelieve in her existence. There’s no such thing as a modern woman. She’s exactly as old as Eve. She doesn’t shake her curls nowadays, nor have hysterics. She writes for the _Daily Mail_, and plays hockey. But do you seriously think these trifling differences affect the eternal feminine? Not a bit of it.” Robert looked at his watch. “I say, I’ve stopped, surely. It must be more than half-past twelve. What do you make it?”