There may also be attempts at compensation with members of the same sex—not necessarily in the form of vicious unnatural relations, but in the nature of patronizing friendship with younger girls. Spinsters in the wealthy classes who organize and direct girls’ clubs are usually seeking compensation of this kind, and receive a tremendous amount of credit for humanitarian motives, of which they are entirely innocent. Nevertheless, the misinterpretation of the crowd, which takes their action to be humanitarian, is eagerly seized and adopted by them, because it helps them to give a definite description to the merely _compensatory_ character of their interest in the club, which even they themselves do not, of course, understand. Among the more wealthy spinsters, there may also be attempts at compensation through frankly humanitarian propaganda, through the endowment or enriching of humanitarian institutions, or through humanitarian labours. This is usually expressed by a very deep concern about the welfare of animals, or the poor, or the babes of the poor, _or anything over which the assumption of power constitutes an easy and uncompromising matter_. We should remember that the relationship of mother to child derives more than half its exquisite pleasure for the female from the fact that it is a relationship of almost absolute power. This instinct to wield power, therefore, which forms an essential factor in female psychology in its relation to the helpless, and which explains the regret most mothers feel when their children are first able to run about and become independent, has to be reckoned with in the psychology of the spinster. If it cannot in her find its normal expression, it will seek compensation in every possible way, and since humanitarian interests offer an uncompromising outlet for its exercise, humanitarian interests are naturally in very great favour among the spinsters of all classes.