'You have gradually come to understand that your own intellect, the average intellect of Man, is really equal to the consideration of all questions, even those generally reserved and set apart for women.' 'Is it not time, therefore, to let me know this mysterious purpose?' Professor Ingleby gazed upon him in silence for a while. 'The purpose is not mine. It is that of a wiser and greater being than myself, whose will I carry out and whom I obey.' 'Wiser than _you_, Professor? Who is she? Do you mean the Perfect Woman herself?' 'No,' she replied; 'the being whom I obey and reverence is none other than--my own husband.' Lord Chester started. 'Your husband?' he cried. '_You obey your husband?_ This is most wonderful.' 'My husband. Yes, Lord Chester, you may now compose that sermon which shall show how Man is the Lord and Master of all created things, including--Woman. I told you I would help you in your sermon. Listen.' * * * * * All that day they drove through the fair garden, which we call England. Along the road they passed the rustics hay-making in the fields; the country women were talking at their doors; the country doctor was plodding along her daily round; the parson was jogging along the wayside, umbrella in hand, to call upon her old people; the country police in blue bonnets, carrying their dreaded pocket-books, were loitering in couples about cross-roads; the farmer drove her cart to market, or rode her cob about the fields; little girls and boys carried dinner to their fathers. Here and there they passed a country-seat, a village with its street of cottages, or they clattered through a small sleepy town with its row of villas and its quiet streets, where the men sat working at the windows in hopes of getting a chat or seeing something to break the monotony of the day. The travellers saw, but noted nothing. For the Professor was teaching her pupil things calculated to startle even the Duchess, and at which Constance would have trembled--things which made his cheek to glow, his eyes to glisten, his mouth to quiver, his hands to clench;--things not to be spoken, not to be whispered, not to be thought, this Professor openly, boldly, and without shame, told the young man. 'I might have guessed it,' he said. 'I had already half guessed it. And this--this is the reason why we are kept in subjection!--this is the LIE they have palmed upon us!' 'Hush! calm yourself. The thing was not done in a day. The system was not invented by conscious hypocrites and deceivers; it grew, and with it the new religion, the new morality, the new order of things. Blame no one, Lord Chester, but blame the system.' 'You have told me too much now,' he said; 'tell me more.'