"Probably because they wouldn't agree to it if you led the opposition, Nellie. We are all only democratic when we think Demos is going our way." This from Ford. Arty slipped quietly off the railing and went into the sitting-room. Connie leaned back and watched him through the open door. "He's started to write," she announced. "He's been terribly down lately so it'll be pretty strong, poor fellow." She laughed good-naturedly; the others laughed with her. "Go on, Nellie dear. It's very interesting, and I didn't mean to interrupt." "Oh! He won't answer me," declared Nellie, in a disgusted tone. "I should think not," retorted Stratton. "I know your womanly habit of tying the best case into a tangled knot with a few Socratic questions. I leave the truth to prove itself." "Just so! But you won't leave the truth about woman to prove itself. You want us to be good mothers, first and last. Why not let us be women, true women, first, and whatever it is fitting for us to be afterwards?" "I want you to be true women." "What is a true woman? A true woman to me is just what a true man is-- one who is free to obey the instincts of her nature. Only give us freedom, opportunity, and we shall be at last all that we should be." "Is it not freedom to be secure against want, to be free to----" "To be mothers." "Yes; to be mothers--the great function of women. To cradle the future. To mould the nation that is to be." "That is so like a man. To be machines, you mean--well cared for, certainly, but machines just the same. Don't you know that we have been machines too long? Can't you see that it is because we have been degraded into machines that Society is what it is?" "How?" questioned Stratton. "He knows it well, Nellie," cried Connie, clapping her hands. "Because you can't raise free men from slave women. We want to be free, only to be free, to be let alone a little, to be treated as human beings with souls, just as men do. We have hands to work with, and brains to think with, and hearts to feel with. Why not join hands with us in theory as you do in fact? Do you tell us now that you won't have our help in the movement? Will you refuse us the fruit of victory when the fight is won? If I thought you would, I for one would cease to care whether the Cause won or not." "I, too, Nellie. We'd all go on strike," cried Connie. "What is it to you whether women are good mothers or not? What objections can you have to our rivalling men in the friendly rivalry that would be under fair conditions? Are our virtues, our woman instincts, so weak and frail that you can't trust us to go straight if the whole of life is freely open to us? Why, when I think of what woman's life is now, what it has been for so long, I wonder how it is that we have any virtues left." She spoke with intense feeling.