HE beautiful young celebrity who had come, appropriately adorned, to deliver her message concerning "The Economic Independence of Woman" to this select gathering of her fellow slaves, also more or less expensively protected from the cold, knew that it would not be easy to shock her present audience into a serious consideration of the subject, but she believed that she could manage it.

It seems that a great many members of the club were keen about the economic independence of woman this morning while their husbands were down town at work, for numerous adequately equipped vehicles might have been seen blocking the street without while Muriel Vincent was being introduced within. She arose, slender and very tall, quite self-possessed (for a slave), and bowed with an engaging smile of amusement, of superiority. There was a flattering silence. The variously becoming formal gardens stopped fluttering, the ornithological exhibits became as stationary as if under glass cases at ill-smelling museums instead of resting appropriately upon complicated coils of hair growing upon or belonging to delicately scented ladies interested in economic independence. Now that the speaker was standing, certain of them could see the skirt, and yes, clearly it was a Paquin. There were others who took such trivialities as a matter of course and were wondering why young Mrs. Vincent had not made a success of marriage. Even to their critical view she appeared eminently qualified. Then in a delicately modulated voice, with a fastidiously languid manner, as if not much impressed with what she had to say, Muriel began:

"The difference between a wife and a mistress is that a mistress is supported by a man who loves her, and a wife by one who does not. And that one of these women is respected for what she does, and

the other is despised. We who are women have decreed which is which. Well, we ought to know!"

Among the many who had come to have their minds improved, not having any more serious use for them until after luncheon, some merely smiled appreciatively at the naïveté of the epigram, at the captivating manner with which the charming young celebrity emitted it. Otherwise they were not much impressed, being so thoroughly accustomed to having their minds improved. Some who were not so advanced, but wanted to be and did not know just how, smiled still more appreciatively. Others looked on with vague, simpering, doll-like faces, not understanding nor caring so long as they were seen there with the rest. A small sprinkling were shocked, but they were not advanced at all, except in years.

One there was who neither smiled nor raised her eyebrows nor missed the point, but listened attentively, not altogether comfortably, gasping a little, but maintaining a detatched, twinkling interest. She was a new member, young, blithe, cheerful-"a cunning little thing" as she was pronounced by older members, "a little thoroughbred" by those who had proposed her for membership. Her name was Molly, and she was not used to hearing things of this sort (as yet). But she was interested, and, like the women under half the big hats in the room, she was thinking about the man she had married, as women always do, Muriel knew, when marriage was discussed-or else about the men they might have married. That is what the other half of the room was thinking about. Perhaps that is why Muriel allowed a pause.

"There are other differences," the lecturer admitted in the same carelessly graceful manner of letting her truths drop, like pearls, from an abundant store. "A mistress, if she is not loved or supported to her satisfaction, can leave her employer for a better position without notice. Her lover knows it. A wife cannot leave without con

siderable notice and her husband knows that. On the other hand, a mistress is compelled to bestir herself, to be alive, alert, to employ her God-given faculties-for she must please to live; whereas a wife need not. She can live without pleasing. She has her legal rights.' Hence she degenerates, becomes fat and stupid

("I'm not fat," thought Molly; "I'm not stupid.")

"-or else she cultivates slenderness and VOL. XLV.-45

frivolity, and corrupts the ideals if not the morals of nice young men who learn to despise her and the sex they would like to revere.

This also missed Molly, as it happened, though she knew a woman it hit, in the same row.

Some of them considered this sheer impudence, coming from Muriel, for they knew her. "She's a disappointed woman," thought others, "that's why she is so bit

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ter." There was comfort in the thought. For not liking what she made them think about their own marriages, they now began thinking about hers, and liked that better -the usual way in such discussions. "Dear me!" smiled those happily-married, "how little she really knows about it." "A halfdozen children would stop all this nonsense," thought one of the older ladies, fanning vigorously.

But Muriel had them all listening attentively now-and that was what she wanted. "Pique interest with your opening sentence. Arouse curiosity with your second," was one of Muriel's rules. She was a writer lady. She wrote about sex and society. Some of her present audience had laughed at her books, others had cried over them,

but all had read them. It is true that she had tried the career which most of them were practicing more or less successfullyin fact she had tried it twice, to give it a thorough test. She did not think much of it. It had failed both times, owing perhaps to the insolvency of her partner. So she had abandoned it for the present and riddled it with her pen instead. In this career she was not only economically free, but also free to wallow in the luxury of self-expression. Few of her hearers were so blessed. They had husbands they feared or respected, or even loved. They had children to consider, or positions they valued. So they took it out in reading books occasionally, and attended lectures like this, thus indulging in the luxury of self-expres

sion vicariously, quite as they took massage instead of exercise, and wrote checks instead of working in the East Side, which was so ill-smelling.

But there sat the one named Molly listening quietly. She had no children, no position to speak of, and but little fear of public opinion. To be sure she had a husband she adored, but suppose he no longer adored her? Suppose he wanted to but couldn't? . . . Well, the new member's mind was open for improvement.

"But, after all, why should the modern marriage turn out differently?" Muriel proceeded, "especially the American marriage. You belong to the leisure class, your husbands to the working class. Mésalliances are seldom successful. You allow your husbands to inflict the curse of idleness upon you, making drones of you because it is no longer necessary for you to be drudges; toiling that you may play Bridge, Charity, Intellectuality and other games toiling harder that you may play more luxuriously. This is not altogether the snobbery of a nation of parvenus; your husbands think it chivalry-and you let them think so. It is not their fault; they are mere thoughtless boys-they have no time to think. But you have. Perhaps you don't like to. Well, the time has come when you must. For see the result: They are producers and grow; you are consumers and stagnate. They are creative; you are seldom even procreative. They mature as men; you degenerate as overgrown, overdressed girls, fulfilling no more useful function than the sandwich man on the street-walking advertisements of your employer's solvency. You are not really persons at all, but things, reflexes of man's semi-barbaric ideals, ornamental slaves, parasites, vampires, blights, destroyers of what you profess to love and promise to obey, hindering and hampering by disillusionment and expense the individual growth as well as the social usefulness of those whom you have the glorious privilege of serving and guiding as helpmeets and life-partners."

Muriel's voice had risen a little. She paused now and added quietly, "And yet you wonder why he does not love you as he promised at the altar! That promise which is supposed to bind you together is the very thing that's put you asunder.

Love may be divine, but marriage, as it is practiced and preached, is not even human. It is inhuman."

Molly's frank brown eyes which had been opening and closing rapidly now sparkled with mirth. Muriel had overshot her mark. The art of understatement had been forgotten in her vehemence, thus affording certain of her hearers a sort of comic relief. But though Molly was glad to laugh, and could find much, for her comfort, that was specious in Muriel's argument, the disquieting fact remained that she and her husband were growing farther apart every day, and that while Fred worked hard for money, her only serious occupation was spending it. There seemed the less excuse in her case because there was so little to spend and because her husband needed no walking advertisement of his money-getting ability, not being in a money-getting occupation. He was a painter, and the measure of an artist's success is not supposed to be the amount of money he makes. "Dear me!" thought Molly, twinkling, "I'm not even a sandwich woman." And so she smiled again and missed the next five minutes of Muriel.

This view of marriage was not exactly the one Molly had been brought up with— nor Fred either, for that matter. But if we give our offspring more or less practical education for every relation in life except the most important and practical of all, we must not be surprised if they turn after a while for instruction to such reliable sources of knowledge as novels and lady lecturers. For the question sometimes becomes pressing and important. Molly had been trained from birth for just one thing, and that was to be a bride. She had made a great success at that, but she was no longer a bride. She was now a wife, and she knew as little about her occupation as about being a mother. Not being a mother, she had considerable time to study her present occupation.

She had been led to believe that "if you find the right one," and if "you really love each other," then all the rest followed as naturally and merrily as a marriage bell. She had found the right one. So had Fred. Theirs was notably a love match. In short they believed that they would get along together to the end, because they couldn't get along apart at the beginning.

(Molly was biting her lip. She did not believe that any one knew that Fred was tired of it—as yet.)

"But when you hold him so close to the grindstone by day and the hearth-stone by night, allowing him to see no other woman except in your disquieting presence

(Molly dropped her eyes, but no one noticed her.)

"if you make a slave of him down town and a page of him up town, you must not be surprised that sheer weariness grows into irritation and irritation into desperation, with the final result that while he appears with you in public he disappears without you in private."

(Molly looked up. "Fred doesn't do that!" she rejoiced, but again she considered her calling, missing some of the speaker's views upon it. . . .)

"Whatever may be the new marriage," Muriel concluded, for she seemed inclined to admit that the institution had come to stay, in some form or other, "men and women will never get together on a sane and lasting basis of mutual interest, understanding and respect as life partners, until women become economic entities-as few of you here are, or else you could not waste this valuable portion of the working day in hearing me earn my fee. In short, there can be no real marriage worthy of the name and a help to civilization save on a basis of political, social and economic equality. We have given the experiment of making men and women as different as possible a fair trial. We have differentiated them more than the male and female of any branch of the vertebrate kingdom. It is as delightful for love-making as it is miserable for marriage. Suppose we try

"It is for men's sake as well as for women, and the mothers of men, that you should want this; but it is merely as wives that I address you now. You cannot retain his interest in you when you are incapable even of intelligent interest in his work which is dearer to him than you are, as it ought to be if he is a man, and not a mere bridegroom. You cannot command his respect until you are entitled to your own. And if you hope to hold him, without respect, merely by the tricks of the only trade most of you have learned, then he will seek a new bundle of tricks after he has tried and tired of yours—with the result which one beholds to-day, on every hand"—she paused and swept her audience with a quiet smile—“a great many attentive eyes, most of them disillusionized."

And now as the speaker bowed and retired, gathering up the manuscript of her carefully wrought epigrams, there might have been observed the familiar phenomenon of exchanging glances and non-committal smiles from under the wide-spreading hats now suddenly in fluttering motion. Everyone was curious to see how everyone else took it and anxious to reserve an expression of her own opinion until the opinion of her fellows had been expressed. Consequently, except for a few who were quite advanced, no opinions were vouchsafed, otherwise than by raised eyebrows and indulgent smiles. They did not like it, but they were afraid to say so. They had come to be massaged, and were scratched.

Molly, when it came her turn to be presented to the distinguished guest of honor, received two hands and a more personal glance than most of the women had been favored with.

"Are you by any chance the wife of Frederic Carroll, the portrait painter?" asked Muriel with smiling interest.

"His vampire," nodded Molly, looking with amused, mocking interest into the brilliant eyes, slightly penciled, searching hers. "You know his work?" she added, ignoring all that had been said about the failure of wives in the anticipated zest of hearing her husband's success acclaimed before these other wives. It was sweet to hear him referred to as "the portrait