She supposed she had hung up the receiver, fastened on her jewelled "Motherhood" badge, slipped on rings and bracelets as usual. But she remembered nothing clearly until she found herself on the platform at the end of the packed ball-room, looking across rows and rows of earnest confiding faces, with lips and eyes prepared for the admiring reception of her "message." She was considered a very good speaker: she knew how to reach the type of woman represented by this imposing assemblage--delegates from small towns all over the country, united by a common faith in the infinite extent of human benevolence and the incalculable resources of American hygiene. Something of the moral simplicity of her own bringing-up brought her close to these women, who had flocked to the great perfidious city serenely unaware of its being anything more, or other, than the gigantic setting of a Mothers' Meeting. Pauline, at such times, saw the world through their eyes, and was animated by a genuine ardour for the cause of motherhood and domesticity. As she turned toward her audience a factitious serenity descended on her. She felt in control of herself and of the situation. She spoke. "Personality--first and last, and at all costs. I've begun my talk to you with that one word because it seems to me to sum up our whole case. Personality--room to develop in: not only elbow-room but body-room and soul-room, and plenty of both. That's what every human being has a right to. No more effaced wives, no more drudging mothers, no more human slaves crushed by the eternal round of housekeeping and child-bearing--" She stopped, drew a quick breath, met Nona's astonished gaze over rows of bewildered eye-glasses, and felt herself plunging into an abyss. But she caught at the edge, and saved herself from the plunge-- "That's what our antagonists say--the women who are afraid to be mothers, ashamed to be mothers, the women who put their enjoyment and their convenience and what they call their happiness before the mysterious heaven-sent joy, the glorious privilege, of bringing children into the world--" A round of applause from the reassured mothers. She had done it! She had pulled off her effect from the very jaws of disaster. Only the swift instinct of recovery had enabled her, before it was too late, to pass off the first sentences of her other address, her Birth Control speech, as the bold exordium of her hymn to motherhood! She paused a moment, still inwardly breathless, yet already sure enough of herself to smile back at Nona across her unsuspecting audience--sure enough to note that her paradoxical opening had had a much greater effect than she could have hoped to produce by the phrases with which she had meant to begin. A hint for future oratory-- Only--the inward nervousness subsisted. The discovery that she could lose not only her self-control but her memory, the very sense of what she was saying, was like a hand of ice pointing to an undecipherable warning.