“You can break the statement up into a thousand signs and reasons,” said Bedient.  “We hear such wonderful things about America in Asia—­in India.  Waiting for a ship in Calcutta, I saw a picture-show for the first time.  It ran for a half hour, showing the sufferings of a poor Hindu buffeted around the world—­a long, dreary portion of starvation, imprisonment and pain.  The dramatic climax lifted me from the chair.  It was his heaven and happiness.  His stormy passage was ended.  I saw him standing in the rain among the steerage passengers of an Atlantic steamer—­and suddenly through the gray rushing clouds, appeared the Goddess of Liberty.  He had come home at last—­to a port of freedom and peace and equality——­”

“God have mercy on him,” murmured Cairns.

“Yes,” said Bedient, “a poor little shaking picture show, and I wept like a boy in the dark.  It was my New York, too....  But we shall be that—­all that the world in its distress and darkness thinks of us, we must be.  You know a man is at his best with those who think highly of him.  The great world-good must come out of America, for its bones still bend, its sutures are not closed....  You and I spent our early years afield with troops and wars, before we were adult enough to perceive the bigger conflict—­the sex conflict.  This is on, David.  It must clear the atmosphere before men and women realize that their interests are one; that neither can rise by holding down the other; that the present relations of men and women, broadly speaking, are false to themselves, to each other, and crippling to the morality and vitality of the race.

“You have seen it, for it is about you.  The heart of woman to-day is kept in a half-starved state.  That’s why so many women run to cultists and false prophets and devourers, who preach a heaven of the senses.  In another way, the race is sustaining a tragic loss.  Look at the young women from the wisest homes—­the finest flower of young womanhood—­our fairest chance for sons of strength.  How few of them marry!  I tell you, David, they are afraid.  They prefer to accept the bitter alternative of spinsterhood, rather than the degrading sense of being less a partner than a property.  They see that men are not grown, except physically.  They suffer, unmated, and the tragedy lies in the leakage of genius from the race.”

Cairns’ mind moved swiftly from one to another of the five women he had called together to meet his friend.

“David,” Bedient added after a moment, “the man who does the great good, must do it through women, for women are listening to-day!  Men are down in the clatter—­examining, analyzing, bartering.  The man with a message must drive it home through women!  If it is a true message, they will feel it.  Women do not analyze, they realize.  When women realize their incomparable importance, that they are identified with everything lovely and of good report under the sun,