In France the Countess Madelaine de Ranier lived in a château of the old aristocracy. And she had a fortune of hundreds of thousands of francs but not a sou to spend as she pleased. You would have thought that she had everything that heart could wish, until you caught unawares the wistful expression in her eyes when they forgot their smiling. Madelaine de Ranier, having no children of her own, would have loved to write checks for the charities that took care of other people’s children. But she couldn’t. It was a very large dot that she had brought to her husband. But by the laws of France he administered it. Out of the income, he of course paid her bills. The third year of her marriage there occurred to her the idea for a confidential arrangement which she made with her dressmaker for doubling on the bills submitted for her evening gowns and dividing the proceeds accruing. It was the Countess’ only source of ready money. She kept it in the secret drawer of her jewel case, these few francs that she could count her own, among her costly articles of adornment valued at thousands. To-day the Count is somewhere on the Somme and Madelaine de Ranier is daily at a desk in Paris directing the great commercial house in which her dot and the family fortune are invested. I saw her in the winter of 1917. Her eyes were sparkling. From the large income that she now handles, she had just written off a contribution to the Orphans of France Fund for the nation. And nobody had said, “You must not,” or equally as authoritatively, “I do not wish it.” In England there is Edith Russell, Dr. Edith Russell she really is. She gave up her profession when she married, to devote herself wholly to home making in the great house in Cavendish Square, London. It requires nine servants and careful planning to meet the expenses, even though her husband turns over to her all of his income. “Can’t we go out to Hampstead to a smaller house instead?” she asked him one day, laying her housekeeping accounts before him. She was trying somehow to plan for a financial surplus. The Malthusian League was in need of funds and she used to be one of its most earnest workers. But her husband said: “Not at all.” Even if there were indeed hundreds of pounds available, he did not approve of the League’s principles anyhow. Now Dr. Edith Russell in response to her country’s call is back on the staff of the borough health department in the medical work in which she was engaged before her marriage. And she is again a Malthusian League contributor. You see, it’s her own money now, not her husband’s.