These unfortunate creatures, faced with the new conditions, were in their greater ignorance and incapacity and helplessness, trying to live as if nothing had occurred!--as if the old order still existed. And the men, partly through ignorance, partly through preoccupation with the new order, partly through indifference and contempt veiled as consideration for the weaker sex, were encouraging them in their fatal folly. Was it strange that the women were deceived, remained unconscious of their peril? No, it was on the contrary inevitable. When men, though working away under and at the new conditions, still talked as if the old conditions prevailed, when preachers still preached that way, and orators still eulogized the thing that was dead and buried as if it lived and reigned, when in order to find out the change you had to disregard the speech, the professions, the confident assertions of all mankind and observe closely their actions only--when there was this universal unawareness and unpreparedness, how could the poor women be condemned? I could not but admit to myself that in his account of the doings of the women Armitage was only slightly if at all exaggerating. But with my more judicial temperament that had won me fortune and leadership while hardly more than a youth, I could not join him in damning the women for their folly and idleness and uselessness. So, the immediate result of Armitage’s talk was a gentler and thoroughly tolerant frame of mind toward my wife, both as to herself and as to what she had done to our daughter. After all, I had for wife only the typical woman--and a rarely sweet and charming example of the type. And my daughter was no worse, perhaps was better, than the average girl of her age and position. What did I think I had--or ought to have--in the way of wife and daughter, anyhow? What was this vague, sentimental dream of family life? If I were by some magic to find myself possessed of the sort of family I thought I wanted, wouldn’t I be more dissatisfied than at present? When I had a wife and a daughter who _looked_ so well and did nothing but what everyone around me regarded as right and proper, was I not unjust in my discontent? I had not seen Edna or Margot for several days before my talk with Bob Armitage. I did not see Edna for several days afterwards, though I dined at home every evening and did not go out after dinner. I was debating how to make overtures toward a reconciliation when she came into my study. She had an air of coldness and constraint--the air of the woman who is inflicting severe punishment upon an offending husband by withholding herself from him. She said: “Mrs. Robert Armitage has asked me to dine on Thursday evening.” I replied hesitatingly: “Thursday-- I’ve an engagement for Thursday--a dinner.” In her agitation she did not note that I had not finished. Dropping her coldness, she flashed out fiercely: