“Oh, no, Mrs. Cromwell,” Mrs. Battle returned, and although her manner was deferential to the older woman she seemed to be gently shocked;—her voice became a little protesting. “I could never in the world have experienced a thought like that just by myself. It was every bit Mr. Battle’s. In fact, he almost as much as dictated that whole paragraph to me, word for word. It seemed a shame for me to sit up there and appear to take the credit for it; but I knew, of course, that everybody who knows us the least bit intimately would understand I could never write anything and it was all Mr. Battle.” “My dear, you’ll never persuade us of it,” the third lady said. “There were thoughts in your paper so characteristically feminine that no one but a woman could possibly——” “Oh, but _he_ could!” Mrs. Battle interrupted with an eagerness that was more than audible, for it showed itself vividly in her brightened eyes and the sudden glow of pink beneath them. “That’s one of the most wonderful things about Mr. Battle: his intellect is just as feminine as it is masculine, Mrs. Dodge. He’s absolutely—well, the only way I can express it is in his own words. Mr. Battle says no one can be great who isn’t universal in his thinking. And you see that’s where he excels so immensely;—Mr. Battle is absolutely universal in his thinking. It seems to me it’s one of the great causes of Mr. Battle’s success; he not only has the most powerful reasoning faculties I ever knew in any man but he’s absolutely gifted with a woman’s intuition.” She paused to utter a little murmur of fond laughter, as if she herself had so long and helplessly marvelled over Mr. Battle that she tolerantly found other people’s incredulous amazement at his prodigiousness natural but amusing. “You see, an intellect like Mr. Battle’s can’t be comprehended from knowing other men, Mrs. Dodge,” she added. “Other men look at things simply in a masculine way, of course. Mr. Battle says that’s only seeing half. Mr. Battle says women live on one hemisphere of a globe and men on the other, and neither can look round the circle, but from the stars the whole globe is seen—so that’s why we should keep our eyes among the stars! I wanted to work that thought into my paper, too. Isn’t it beautiful, the idea of keeping our eyes among the stars? But he said there wasn’t a logical opening for it, so I didn’t. Mr. Battle says we should never use a thought that doesn’t find its own logical place. That is, not in writing, he says. But don’t you think it’s wonderful—that idea of the globe and the two hemispheres and all?” “Lovely,” Mrs. Dodge agreed. “Yet I don’t see how it proves Mr. Battle has a feminine mind.”