Mrs. Dennison’s face was shining.  She had pulled the gloves from her warm hands, and Kate, looking down at them, saw how work-worn they now were, though they were softly rounded and delicate.  She knew this woman might have married a second time; but she was toiling that she might keep faith with the man she had laid in his grave.  She was expecting a reunion with him.  Her hope warmed her and kept her redolent of youth.  She was still a bride, though she was a widow.  She was of those who understood the things of the spirit.  The essence of womanhood was in her—­the elusive poetry of womanhood.  To such implications of mystic beauty there was no retort.  Kate saw in that moment that when women got as far as emancipation they were going to lose something infinitely precious.  The real question was, should not these beautiful, these evanishing joys be permitted to depart in the interests of progress?  Would not new, more robust satisfactions come to take the place of them?

They rode on in silence, and Kate’s mind darted here and there—­darted to Lena Vroom, that piteous little sister of Icarus, with her scorched wings; darted to Honora Fulham with her shattered faith; to Mary Morrison with her wanton’s wisdom; to Mary Finn, whose womanhood was her undoing; to Marna, who had given fame for love and found the bargain good; to Mrs. Leger, who had turned to God; to her mother, the cringing wife, who could not keep faith with herself and her vows of obedience, and who had perished of the conflict; to Mrs. Dennison, happy in her mid-Victorian creed.  Then from these, whom she knew, her mind swept on to the others—­to all the restless, disturbed, questioning women the world over, who, clinging to beautiful old myths, yet reached out diffident hands to grasp new guidance.  The violence and nurtured hatred of some of them offended her deeply; the egregious selfishness of others seemed to her as a flaming sin.  Militant, unrestrained, avid of coarse and obvious things, they presented a shameful contrast to this little, gentle, dreaming keeper of a boarding-house who sat beside her, her dove’s eyes filled with the mist of memories.

And yet—­and yet—­

XX

The next day, as it happened, she was invited to Lake Forest to attend a “suffrage tea.”  A distinguished English suffragette was to be present, and the more fashionable group of Chicago suffragists were gathering to pay her honor.

It was a torrid day with a promise of storm, and Kate would have preferred to go to the Settlement House to do her usual work, which chanced just now to be chiefly clerical.  But she was urged to meet the Englishwoman and to discuss with her the matter of the Children’s Bureau, in which the Settlement House people were now taking the keenest interest.  Kate went, gowned in fresh linen, and well pleased, after all, to be with a holiday crowd riding through the summer woods.  Tea was being served on the lawn.  It overlooked the lake, and here were gathered both men and women.  It was a company of rather notable persons, as Kate saw at a glance.  Almost every one there was distinguished for some social achievement, or as the advocate of some reform or theory, or perhaps as an opulent and fashionable patron.  It was at once interesting and amusing.