Thousands, and tens of thousands of women who pass through the Eighth Year, not unscathed, find another way out. They are finding it now through this new femininist movement which is linked up with the cause of Women’s Suffrage. The Eighth Year produces many suffragettes, militant and otherwise. At first, in the first years of their married life, they scoffed at the idea of Votes for Women. They could not see the sense of it. They hated the vulgarities of the business, the shamelessness of it, the ugly squalor of these scuffles with the police, these fights with the crowds, these raids on the House of Commons. It was opposed to all their ideals of femininity and to all their traditions of girlhood. “The hussies ought to be whipped,” is the verdict of the young wife in the first stage of her romantic affection. But, later on, when romance has worn very threadbare in the little home, when reality is beginning to poke its head through the drawing-room windows, she finds herself taking an interest in this strange manifestation which seems to be inspired by some kind of madness. She is silent now when some new phase in the conflict is being discussed in her presence. She listens and ponders. Presently she goes out of her way to get introduced to some suffrage woman on the outskirts of her acquaintance. She is surprised to find her a wonderfully cheerful, and apparently sane, woman, very keen, very alert, and with a great sense of humor--utterly unlike her tired, bored and melancholy self. Perhaps she is quite a young woman, a bachelor girl, earning her own living, down in Chelsea, or as a typist secretary in the City. But young as she is she has dived into all sorts of queer studies--the relations between men and women, the divorce laws, the science of eugenics--and she discusses them with an amazing frankness, and in a most revolutionary spirit, startling, and a little appalling, at first to this wife in her Eighth Year. She has made up her mind conclusively on all the great questions of life. She pooh-poohs romantic love. “There is too much fuss made about it,” she says. “It is a mere episode, like influenza. There are bigger things.” She holds herself perfectly free to choose her mate, and to remedy any little mistake which she may make in her choice. At present she prefers her independence and her own job, which she likes, thank you very much. She is tremendously enthusiastic about the work which women have got to do in the world, and there is nothing they cannot do, in her opinion. She claims an absolute equality with men. In fact, she is inclined to claim a superiority. After all, men are poor things.... Altogether she is a most remarkable young woman, and she seems to get tremendous fun out of life--and this wife in her Eighth Year, without agreeing with her yet envies her!