"I believe I see what you meant," he said to Ray. "About the values that things stand for. A man represents a certain amount of power in the world." "O, does he?" put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection. "I'm glad to know." "He _could_ be doing some things that a woman could not do at all--was never meant to do. He stands for so much force. You may apply things as you please, but if you don't use them according to their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid for--somewhere." "That's a nice principle!" said Marion. "I like that I should like to be paid for what I _might_ be good for!" Frank Sunderline laughed. "It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other; but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for; which wouldn't come to pass if the pine weren't cheapest. Women wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule, to take men for it." "But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for instance?" asked Ray. "Why, you're coming round to _my_ side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should really like to know _where_ you are?" "I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray, smiling. "That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is getting righted. Women _are_ being paid more, in proportion, for intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where _time_ is paid for,--where it is personal service,--the old principle at the root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, _make way_ for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily _oppression_ by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege." "Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims, they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion.