"No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of our vague personalities to grasp. There are seeming men with the personalities of women. There are plural personalities. There are two-legged human creatures that are neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. We, as personalities, float like fog-wisps through glooms and darknesses and light-flashings. It is all fog and mist, and we are all foggy and misty in the thick of the mystery." "Maybe it's mystification instead of mystery--man-made mystification," Paula said. "There talks the true woman that Leo thinks is not a half-soul," Dick retorted. "The point is, Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and tangled together, and we know little of one and less of the other." "But women are beautiful," the boy stammered. "Oh, ho!" Hancock broke in, his black eyes gleaming wickedly. "So, Leo, you identify woman with beauty?" The young poet's lips moved, but he could only nod. "Very well, then, let us take the testimony of painting, during the last thousand years, as a reflex of economic conditions and political institutions, and by it see how man has molded and daubed woman into the image of his desire, and how she has permitted him--" "You must stop baiting Leo," Paula interfered, "and be truthful, all of you, and say what you do know or do believe." "Woman is a very sacred subject," Dar Hyal enunciated solemnly. "There is the Madonna," Graham suggested, stepping into the breach to Paula's aid. "And the cérébrale," Terrence added, winning a nod of approval from Dar Hyal. "One at a time," Hancock said. "Let us consider the Madonna-worship, which was a particular woman-worship in relation to the general woman-worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What was he to do?" "Trust him to find a way--the cunning rascal," Terrence interjected. "He made a heavenly image of her," Hancock kept on. "He idealized her good qualities, and put her so far away that her bad qualities couldn't get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his quiet lazy pipe of peace and meditating upon the stars. And when the ordinary every-day woman tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his thoughts and remembered his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the bearer of life and custodian of immortality. "Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship of the Mother. And there was man still saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do then?" "Ah, the rascal," Terrence grinned.