Tommy pointed out the companionable qualities of Etta Concannon. But she would not hear of Etta. The sight of Tommy’s wan face had decided her, and she was a woman who was accustomed to carry out her decisions. She was somewhat dictatorial, somewhat hectoring. She had taken it into her head to play fairy godmother to Tommy Burgrave, and she resented his repudiation of her godmotherdom. Besides, there were purely selfish reasons for choosing Tommy rather than Etta, which she acknowledged with inward candour. Tommy was a man who would fetch and carry and keep the chauffeur up to the mark, and inspire gendarmes and custom-house officials and maitres-d’hotel with respect, and, although Clementina feared neither man nor devil, she was aware of the value of a suit of clothes filled with a male entity as a travelling adjunct to a lone woman. With Etta the case would be different. Etta would fetch her motor-veil and carry her gloves with the most adoringly submissive grace in the world; but all the real fetching and carrying for the two of them would have to be done by Clementina herself. Therein lay the difference between Clementina and the type generally known as the emancipated woman. She had no exaggerated notions of the equality of the sexes, which in feminine logic generally means the high superiority of women. Circumstance had emancipated her from dependence upon the other sex, but on the circumstance and the emancipation she cast not too favourable an eye. She had a crystal clear idea of the substantial usefulness of men in this rough and not always ready cosmic scheme. Therefore, for purposes of utility, she wanted Tommy. In her usual blunt manner she told him so. “You run in here at all hours of the day and night, and it’s Clementina this and Clementina that until I can’t call my soul my own—and now, the first time I ask you to do me a service you fall back on your silly little prejudices and vanity and pride, and say you can’t do it.” “I’m very sorry,” said Tommy, humbly. “I tell you what it is,” said Clementina, with a curiously vicious feminine stroke, “you’d come if I was a smart-looking woman with fine clothes who could be a credit to you—but you won’t face going about with an animated rag-and-bone shop like me.” Tommy flushed as pink as only a fair youth can flush; he sprang forward and seized her wrists and, unwittingly, hurt her in his strong and indignant grip. “What you’re saying is abominable and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If I thought anything like that I’d be the most infernal cur that ever trod the earth. I’d like to shake you for daring to say such things about me.” He flung away her hands and stalked off to the other end of the studio, leaving her with tingling wrists and unfindable retort. “If you really think I can be of service to you,” he said, in a dignified way, having completed the return journey, “I shall be most happy to come.” “I don’t want you to make a martyr of yourself,” she snapped.