"I don't. I know the thousand and one activities you women are concerned with. I know how much better church and state always have been and are bound to be, when the women get behind and push, if they throw their strength right." Beulah rose enthusiastically to this bait and talked rationally and well for some time. Just as Peter was beginning to feel that David and Jimmie had been guilty of the most unsympathetic exaggeration of her state of mind--unquestionably she was not as fit physically as usual--she startled him with an abrupt change into almost hysterical incoherence. "I have a right to live my own life," she concluded, "and nobody--nobody shall stop me." "We are all living our own lives, aren't we?" Peter asked mildly. "No woman lives her own life to-day," Beulah cried, still excitedly. "Every woman is living the life of some man, who has the legal right to treat her as an imbecile." "Hold on, Beulah. How about the suffrage states, how about the women who are already in the proud possession of their rights and privileges? They are not technical imbeciles any longer according to your theory. The vote's coming. Every woman will be a super-woman in two shakes,--so what's devouring you, as Jimmie says?" "It's after all the states have suffrage that the big fight will really begin," Beulah answered wearily. "It's the habit of wearing the yoke we'll have to fight then." "The anti-feminists," Peter said, "I see. Beulah, can't you give yourself any rest, or is the nature of the cause actually suicidal?" To his surprise her tense face quivered at this and she tried to steady a tremulous lower lip. "I am tired," she said, a little piteously, "dreadfully tired, but nobody cares." "Is that fair?" "It's true." "Your friends care." "They only want to stop me doing something they have no sympathy with. What do Gertrude and Margaret know of the real purpose of my life or my failure or success? They take a sentimental interest in my health, that's all. Do you suppose it made any difference to Jeanne d'Arc how many people took a sympathetic interest in her health if they didn't believe in what she believed in?" "There's something in that." "I thought Eleanor would grow up to take an interest in the position of women, and to care about the things I cared about, but she's not going to." "She's very fond of you." "Not as fond as she is of Margaret." Peter longed to dispute this, but he could not in honesty. "She's a suffragist." "She's so lukewarm she might just as well be an anti. She's naturally reactionary. Women like that aren't much use. They drag us back like so much dead weight." "I suppose Eleanor has been a disappointment to you," Peter mused, "but she tries pretty hard to be all things to all parents, Beulah. You'll find she won't fail you if you need her."