This was so unusual--from the Worm it amounted to an outburst!--that even Hy, swinging around from the yellow keyboard, waited in silence. “You fellows know Greenwich Village,” the musing one went on, puffing slowly and following with his eyes the curling smoke. “You know the dope---'Oats for Women!' somebody called it--that a woman must be free as a man, free to go to the devil if she chooses. You know, so often, when these feminine professors of freedom talk to you how they over-emphasize the sex business--by the second quarter-hour you find yourself solemnly talking woman's complete life, rights of the unmarried mother, birth control; and after you've got away from the lady you can't for the life of you figure out how those topics ever got started, when likely as not you were thinking about your job or the war or Honus Wagner's batting slump. You know.” Hy nodded, with a quizzical look. Peter was motionless and silent. “You know--I don't want to knock; got too much respect for the real idealists here in the Village--but you fellows do know how you get to anticipating that stuff and discounting it before it comes; and you can't help seeing that the woman is more often than not just dressing up ungoverned desires in sociological language, that she's leaping at the chance to experiment with emotions that women have had to suppress for ages. Back of it is the new Russianism they live and breathe--to know no right or wrong, trust your instincts, respond to your emotions, bow to your desires.... Well, now, here's Sue Wilde. She looks like a regular little radical. And acts it. Breaks away from her folks--lives with the regular bunch in the Village--takes up public dancing and acting--smokes her cigarettes--knows her Strindberg and Freud--yet... well, I've dined with her once, lunched with her once, spent five hours in her apartment talking Isadora Duncan as against Pavlowa, even walked the streets half a night arguing about what she calls the Truth... and we haven't got around to 'the complete life' yet.” “How do you dope it out?” asked Hy. “Well”--the Worm deliberately thought out his reply--“I think she's so. Most of 'em aren't so. She's a real natural oasis in a desert of poseurs. Probably that's why I worry about her.” “Why worry?” From Hy. “True enough. But I do. It's the situation she has drifted into, I suppose. If she was really mature you'd let her look out for herself. It's the old he protective instinct in me, I suppose. The one thing on earth she would resent more than anything else. But this fellow Zanin...” He painstakingly made a smoke ring and sent it toward the tarnished brass hook on the window-frame. It missed. He tried again. Peter stirred uncomfortably, there on the couch. “What has she told you about Zanin?” he asked, desperately controlling his voice.