She ventured to surmise that all his expenses were being paid by some labor organization. That was the way with these professional radicals. They traveled around the world on their own wits and on somebody else’s money. They never succeeded in making even a bowing acquaintance with a check account. Never. She trusted Janet would not be such a fool as to forget this fact. Now, M. St. Hilaire was a very different story. "Marry a rich man, Janet, and the memory of that Claude affair will die a natural death. Marry a poor one, and it will keep on bobbing up." "I shouldn’t care if it did." "No, _you_ wouldn’t, but your husband would." "So my friends are at some pains to remind me," said Janet, rather bitterly. "You and Cornelia keep on telling me so, and Robert once expressed the same opinion." "Well, he was right. I don’t say it from spite, like Cornelia does. I say it because I’m—because I’m damned fond of you—" She repressed the tears in her eyes. "You’re the only one here," she went on, choking down a sob, "that doesn’t treat me as though I was an escaped inmate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and ought to be sent back there." Janet went to her side and comforted her. But Mazie would not be comforted. She burst out with: "The trouble with us girls is that we’re too soft about love, as soft as putty. What good does all this talk and fuss about the equality of women do us? Where does it get us? Just exactly nowhere. And women won’t be worth as much as men, until they’re as hard about love as men are; and that means as hard as nails." Divining Janet’s silent comment, Mazie added defiantly that it was because she herself hadn’t been hard enough that she had come to grief at the hands of "that swine Hutchins." After a marked pause, Mazie reverted to the subject of M. St. Hilaire. Had he proposed as usual during the morning’s ride? "Yes," said Janet. "No other news?" "He assured me that I could have everything I wanted. Even my soul should be my own." "I don’t like that sob stuff about souls," said Mazie whimsically. "What did you answer?" "I told him that women would never be able to call their souls their own until they could call their bodies their own." "My God, Janet! You have to give the poor man _something_ for his money." "Exactly. And as I can’t give him a fair return for it, it’s clear that I oughtn’t to marry him, isn’t it?" "Fair return! Did you ever see anybody give a fair return in this sex business? I can gamble on it you didn’t. Fair return! Look here, Janet, who started putting a price on love? Did women start it or did men? Was it men or women that threw love on the curb to be bought and sold with other junk? Say, did you ever see a man who’d take love for a free gift? Let me give you a tip, dearie. If a woman don’t sell her love for all she can squeeze out of a man, and give him underweight into the bargain, the man don’t think he’s getting his money’s worth."