"I won't talk about her any more if she bores you. I thought, and hoped, that she might interest you. That's the reason I started her as a topic of conversation. As she doesn't, I'll drop her again, at once. But what am I to do? I began this evening with a literary allusion, and found that you'd never heard of Longfellow's 'Village Blacksmith.' That wasn't a very encouraging start, you'll admit. Last night I tried you with art, and all you did was to mix it up with morality, which, as everybody knows, is a perfectly hopeless thing to do. The ancient Hebrews had more sense. They were specialists in morality, and they absolutely forbade art. Whereas the Greeks, who were artists, went in for a thoroughly immoral kind of life. Finding that you were totally indifferent to the metaphysics of the aesthetic, I offered you an interesting chain of abstract reasoning. What was the result? You were absolutely unable to follow me. I then threw out some hints which might have led to an interesting psychological discussion, but you didn't know what I meant. This evening I touched on one of the great principles which must guide us in the consideration of the whole feminist question--" "That was when you talked about judging Miss King's intentions by the look of her eyes," said the Major. "Yes; it was. And so far as I can recollect, all you did was to grin in a futile and somewhat vulgar way. Finally, I tried to talk to you about child culture, which is one of the most important problems of our day; a problem which is occupying the attention of statesmen, philanthropists, philosophers, doctors, and teachers of every kind, from kindergarten mistresses to university professors. I began in quite a simple way with a question about the food of an infant. We might, if you had taken the subject up at all warmly, have got on to the endowment of motherhood, nature study, medical examination of schools, the boarding-out of workhouse children, religious education, boy scouts, eugenics, and a lot of other perfectly fascinating topics. But what do you do? You say frankly and shamelessly that you know nothing at all about the matter." "But I really do not know how to feed babies. What was the use of pretending that I do?" "Is there--to get back to the point from which I started--is there any subject that you do know anything about besides politics and polo ponies?" "I'm afraid not, J. J., except the yacht. I do know something about her." "Then," said Meldon, "we'll discuss her. I expect we'll come to an end of her soon, but we can at all events decide where we'll go to-morrow."