"Because I have always longed to see him. A flea that could penetrate the pachydermatous hide of an elephant must have been, indeed, a monster. In England we only see that sort under microscopes. They seem to thrive nowhere else. Yours must have been one that had escaped from under the lens. He was magnified three thousand diameters and he never recovered from it. You probably took him over in your trunk." "Oh, no, I'm sure I didn't," protested Miss Nimrod. "Well, then, Mumbo Jumbo did in his." "Excuse me," interposed Miss Jack. "We are getting off the point. I did not say the passage was calculated to raise a blush, I said it was a grave error of taste." "It is a mere flea-bite," broke in the millionaire, impatiently. "I liked it when I first read it, and I like it now I hear it again. It is a touch of nature that brings the Tartary traveller home to every fireside." "Besides," added Lord Silverdale. "The introduction of the butterfly and the lily makes it quite poetical." "Ladies and gentlemen," interposed the President, at last, "we are not here to discuss entomology or æsthetics. You stated, Miss Jack, that you thought of joining us as a protest against female unconventionally." "I said unconventional females," persisted Miss Jack. "Even so, I do not follow you," said Lillie. "It is extremely simple. I am unable to marry because I have a frank nature, not given to feigning or fawning. I cannot bring a husband what he expects nowadays in a wife." "What is that?" inquired Lillie curiously. "A chum," answered Miss Jack. "Formerly a man wanted a wife, now he wants a woman to sympathize with his intellectual interests, to talk with him intelligently about his business, discuss politics with him--nay, almost to smoke with him. Tobacco for two is destined to be the ideal of the immediate future. The girls he favors are those who flatter him by imitating him. It is women like Wee Winnie who have depraved his taste. There is nothing the natural man craves less for than a clever, learned wife. Only he has been talked over into believing that he needs intellectual companionship, and now he won't be happy till he gets it. I have escaped politics and affairs all my life, and I am determined not to marry into them." "What a humiliating confession!" sneered Miss Nimrod. "It is a pity you don't wear doll's-clothes." "I claim for every woman the right to live her own life in her own toilettes," retorted Miss Jack. "The sneers about dolls are threadbare. I have watched these intellectual camaraderies, and I say they are a worse injustice to woman than any you decry." "That sounds a promising paradox," muttered Lord Silverdale. "The man expects the woman to talk politics--but he refuses to take a reciprocal interest in the woman's sphere of work. He will not talk nursery or servants. He will preach economy, but he will not talk it." "That is true," said Lillie impressed. "What reply would you make to that, Miss Nimrod?"