“Perhaps,” interrupted Sophy, “he thought it would be in the papers, and that unless he wrote it might be taken for someone else----” “He _knew_ it would be in the papers,” said Diana, “and naturally wished to let his acquaintances know that he, and no other man of the name of May, is the bereaved father of the domestic melodrama. Well!”--and she shook back her hair over her shoulders--“it’s finished! I am dead!--and ‘born again,’ as the Scripture saith,--at rather a mature age!--but I may yet turn out worth regenerating!--who knows?” She laughed, and turned to the dressing-table to complete her toilette. Sophy put affectionate arms about her. “You are a dear, strange, clever, lovable thing, anyway!” she said. “But really, I’ve had quite a sleepless night thinking about that Dr. Dimitrius! He may be a secret investigator or a spy, and if you go to him he may want you to do all sorts of dreadful, even criminal things!----” “But I shouldn’t do them!” laughed Diana. “Sophy, have you _no_ confidence in my mental balance?” “_I_ have, but some people wouldn’t,” Sophy replied. “They would say that a woman of your age ought to know better than to leave a comfortable home where you had only the housekeeping to do, and give up the chance of an ample income at your parents’ death, just to go away on a wild-goose chase after new adventures, and all because you imagined you weren’t loved! Oh, dear! Love is only ‘a springe to catch woodcocks!’ as the venerable Polonius so wisely remarks in _Hamlet_. I know a sneering cynic who says that women are always ‘asking for love!’” Diana paused in the act of brushing out a long bright ripple of hair. Her eyes grew sombre--almost tragic. “So they are!” she said. “They ask for it because they know God meant them to have it! They know they were created for lover-love, wife-love, mother-love,--just think what life means to them when cheated out of all three through the selfishness and treachery of man! Their blood gets poisoned--their thoughts share the bitterness of their blood--they are no longer real women; they become abnormal and of no sex,--they shriek with the Suffragettes, and put on trousers to go ‘on the land’ with the men--they do anything and everything to force men’s attention--forgetting that efforts made on the masculine line completely fail in attraction for the male sex. It is the sensual and physical side of a woman that subjugates a man,--therefore when she is past her youth she has little or no ‘chance,’ as they call it. If she happens to be brainless, she turns into a sour, grizzling, tea-drinking nonentity and talks nothing but scandal and diseases,--if she is intellectually brilliant, well!--sometimes she ‘rounds’ on the dogs that have bayed her into solitude, and, like a wounded animal, springs to her revenge!” The words came impetuously from her lips, uttered in that thrillingly sweet voice which was her special gift and charm. Sophy’s bright eyes opened in sheer astonishment.