“That’s one of the reasons why the liquor men combine to kill suffrage,” said Ray.  “They know it will be a sorry day for them when the women get in.  Positively, the women seem to think that’s all there is to politics—­some moral question; and the whole truth is they’d do a lot of damage to business with their slap-dash methods, as they’d learn to their cost.  When they found their pin-money being cut down, they’d sing another tune, for they’re the most reckless spenders in the world, American women are.”

“They’re the purchasing agents for the most extravagant nation in the world, if you like,” Kate replied.  “Men seem to think that shopping is a mere feminine diversion.  They forget that it’s what supports their business and supplies their homes.  Not to speak of any place beyond our own town, think of the labor involved in buying food and clothing for the two million and a half human beings here in Chicago.  It’s no joke, I assure you.”

“Joke!” echoed Ray.  “A good deal of the shopping I’ve seen at my father’s store seems to me to come under the head of vice.  The look I’ve seen on some of those faces!  It was ravaging greed, nothing less.  Why, we had a sale the other day of cheap jewelry, salesmen’s samples, and the women swarmed and snatched and glared like savages.  I declare, when I saw them like that, so indecently eager for their trumpery ornaments, I said to myself that you’d only to scratch the civilized woman to get at the squaw any day.”

Kate kept a leash on her tongue.  She supposed it was inevitable that they should get back to the old quarrel.  Deep down in Ray, she felt, was an unconquerable contempt for women.  He made an exception of her because he loved her; because she drew him with the mysterious sex attraction.  It was that, and not any sense of spiritual or intellectual approval of her, which made him set her apart as worthy of admiration and of his devoted service.  If ever their lives were joined, she would be his treasure to be kept close in his personal casket,—­with the key to the golden padlock in his pocket,—­and he would all but say his prayers to her.  But all that would not keep him from openly discountenancing her judgment before people.  She could imagine him putting off a suggestion of hers with that patient married tone which husbands assume when they discover too much independent cerebration on the part of their wives.

“I couldn’t stand that,” she inwardly declared, as she let him think that he was assisting her from the car.  “If any man ever used that patient tone to me, I’d murder him!”

She couldn’t keep back her sardonic chuckle.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked irritatedly.

“At the mad world, master,” she answered.

“Where is this dance-hall?” he demanded, as if he suspected her of concealing it.

The tone was precisely the “married” one she had been imagining, and she burst out with a laugh that made him stop and visibly wrap his dignity about him.  Nothing was more evident than that he thought her silly.  But as she paused, too, standing beneath the street-lamp, and he saw her with her nonchalant tilt of her head,—­that handsome head poised on her strong, erect body,—­her force and value were so impressed upon him that he had to retract.  But she was provoking, no getting around that.