RED SWORD (_standing_). You are charged, first, with being a woman. And as a woman you are the living incarnation of the past. You represent conservatism and the anti-military virtues; you clog the wheels of progress; you sap men’s energies and misdirect them from the triumphs of achievement to the service of material things—or immaterial things. Your effeminate beauty poisons art and furnishes countless photographic realists with the means of selling paintings. The love of you has vitiated poetry and music. Masquerading in the garments of caprice, you have deceived man into accepting the traditional. As Futurists we detest you. This is the first charge! (_A pause._) THE WOMAN. You accuse me of being a woman. It is a grave charge. But first, in order that I may have a chance to disprove it, I suggest that you tell me what a woman is. GREEN EARS. A woman is that whose place is in the home. PURPLE HAIR. A woman is that which is ruled by instinct. BLUE FACE. A woman is that which is beautiful. YELLOW HAT. A woman is that which men call a mystery. WHITE HEART (_rapturously_). A woman is that which men love. RED SWORD (_vehemently_). A woman is that which men hate. THE WOMAN. These are your definitions? BLUE FACE. They are. THE WOMAN. Then in order to prove that I am a woman you must prove that they describe me. And you must prove that there is nothing else in me. RED SWORD. We must prove nothing. We act. THE WOMAN. Then why do you talk? RED SWORD (_heatedly_). I deny that you are beautiful. And if you are beautiful, I deny beauty. YELLOW HAT. Is it not our caprice to be judicial? Come, Red Sword, do not descend to flattery! PURPLE HAIR. All our definitions have been proved a million times. They are unprovable. THE WOMAN. I admit them. What then? I will leave the home, I will learn logic, I will cut off my nose, I will tell you my mystery, and I will let your love and your hate kill each other. And I shall still be here. WHITE HEART. Then you will not be a woman, you will be a feminist! THE WOMAN. But I shall be I instead of what you think I am. RED SWORD. You can not be you unless you are what we think you are. BLUE FACE. Brothers, can we kill the woman and spare the feminist? WHITE HEART. If you kill the woman you will make the feminist. YELLOW HAT. No; the feminist is more female than the woman. The feminist would inflict domesticity on the world. She wants all men for her husband. She wants to tie pink ribbons on siege guns and abolish the mountains to make room for the nursery. If we let the feminist live, man can no longer find a place in which to be alone with his adventure. If we let the feminist live we shall make the woman a giant. If we kill the woman we shall kill them both at the same time. GREEN EARS. Show us the feminist without the woman. THE WOMAN. I will do so if you will cease to be men. BLUE FACE. We have ceased to be men. We are supermen. THE WOMAN. Then you see the subwoman.