"Gosh, Fred," he said, soberly, as she ended with the assertion that Feminism was the most interesting thing that had come into the Race Conscienceness since humanity began to stand on its hind legs--"gosh, I take off my hat to you!" His admiration was not so much for the thing she was trying to do, as for the fact that she was trying! She was _doing_ something--anything!--instead of sitting around, like most people, in observant and disapproving idleness. He forgot her snub about his shells; his eyes were ardent with admiring assent to everything she said. "You are the limit!" he said, earnestly. And she, speaking passionately her poor, bare, ugly facts--all true, but verging on lies, because no one of them was the whole Truth--going deeper into her adventure of candor, felt, suddenly, a quickening of the blood. She had an impulse to put out her hand and touch him--the big, sprawling, handsome fellow! His voice, agreeing to all she said, made her quiver into momentary silence, as a harp-string quivers under a twanging and muting thumb. That his assents, which gave her such acute satisfaction, were merely her own convictions, thrown back to her by the sounding-board of his good nature, she did not realize. The intellectual attraction she felt in him was hers. The other attraction, which was his, she did not analyze. She realized only that something seemed to swell in her throat and her breathing quickened. The newness of the sensation threw her off the track of her argument, which was to prove that women would save society by facing facts--"facts" being, apparently, the single one of sex. "When I marry," Fred said, "nobody's going to pull that devilish bromide on me, that the man's past isn't my business. There'll be no Mortimores in _mine_! I mean to have children who will push the race along to perfection!" "I bet they will!" he said. She sat up on the sofa, cross-legged, clasping an ankle with each hand, her eyes glowing in the dusk. "You've given me a brace!" she said. "You've given _me_ one! I'd rather talk to you than any man I know." She put out her hand impulsively, and he gripped it until the seal ring on her little finger cut into the flesh and made her wince with pain and break away; but with the pain there was a curious pang of pleasure. She got on her feet with a spring, and, rubbing her bruised finger, gave a last look about the apartment. "I hope the tabbies will like it. Heavens, Howard, do you think they'll smell cigarette-smoke? I suppose they'd have a fit if they discovered that the 'sweet girl' smoked cigarettes!" "Do they call you a 'sweet girl'?" he said, and roared at the idea. "Mr. Weston doesn't like me to smoke. It gave me quite a shock to find he was such a 'perfect lady.'" "Oh, well, he's old. What can you expect? I like you to. You knock off your ashes like a kid boy."