"But as my cousin says in his article, which in my mind should be spread broadcast, what higher mission for woman than--than--just what are his words, Emelene?" Miss Brand leaned forward, her gaze boring into space. "What higher mission," she quoted, as if talking in a chapel, "for woman than that she sit enthroned in the home, wielding her invisible but mighty scepter from that throne, while man, kissing the hand that so lovingly commands him, shall bear her gifts and do her bidding. That is the strongest vote in the world. That is the universal suffrage which chivalry grants to woman. The unpolled vote! Long may it reign!" Round spots of color had come out on Miss Emelene's long cheeks. "A man who can think like that has the true--the true--what shall I say, Alys?" "But, ladies, I protest that I'm not--" "Has the true chivalry of spirit, Emelene, that the women are too stark raving mad to appreciate. You can't come here, Mr. Evans, to two women to whom womanliness and love of home, thank God, are still uppermost and try to convert us to--" Here Mr. Evans executed a triple gyration, to the annoyance of Hanna, who withdrew from the gesture, and raised his voice to a shout that was not without a note of command. "Convert you! Why women alive, what I've been bursting a blood vessel trying to say during the length of this interview is that I'd as soon dip my soul in boiling oil as try to convert you away from the cause. _My_ cause! _Our_ cause!" "Why--" "I'm here to tell you that I'm with my partner head-over-heels on the plank he has taken." "But we thought--" "We thought you and Betty Sheridan--why, my cousin Genevieve Remington told me that--" "Yes, yes, Miss Emelene. But not even the wiles of a pretty woman can hold out indefinitely against Truth! A broad-minded man has got to keep the door of his mind open to conviction, or it decays of mildew. I confess that finally I am convinced that if there is one platform more than another upon which George Remington deserves his election it is on the brave and chivalrous principles he has so courageously come out with in the current _Sentinel_. Whatever may have been between Betty Sheridan and--" "Mr. Evans, you don't mean to tell me that you and Betty Sheridan have quarreled! Such a desirable match from every point of view, family and all! It goes to show what a rattle-pated bunch of women they are! Any really clever girl with an eye to her future, anti or pro, could shift her politics when it came to a question of matri--" "Mrs. Smith, there comes a time in every modern man's life when he's got to keep his politics and his pretty girls separate, or suffrage will get him if he don't watch out!" "Yes, and Mr. Evans, if what I hear is true, a good-looking woman can talk you out of your safety deposit key!"