“Why, Ma’m Maynard,” said Mary, “you don’t think that all men are fools, too, do you?”

“Eet is not halways safe to say what one believes,” said Ma’m, pursing her lips with mystery.  “Eef mademoiselles, your aunts, should get to hear—­”

“Oh, I won’t tell.”

“Then, yes, ma cherie, I think at times all men are fools ... and I think it is also good at times to make a fool of man.  For why?  Because it is revenge.

“Ah, ma cherie, I who have been three times wed—­I tell you I often think the old-world view is right.  Man is the natural enemy of a woman.

“He is not to be trus’.

“I have heard it discuss’ by great minds—­things I cannot tell you yet—­but you will learn them as you live.  And halways the same conclusion arrives:  Man is the natural enemy of a woman, and the one best way to keep him from making a fool of you, is to turn ’round queeck and make it a fool of him!”

“Oh, Ma’m Maynard, no!” protested Mary, who had turned from the mirror and was staring with wide eyes.  “I can’t believe it—­never!”

“What is it, ma cherie, which you cannot believe?”

“That man is woman’s natural enemy.”

“But I tell you, yes, yes....  It has halways been so and it halways will.  Everything that lives has its own natural enemy—­and a woman’s natural enemy—­it is man!

“Think just for a moment, ma cherie,” she continued.  “Why are parents so careful?  Mon Dieu, you would think it at times that a tiger is out in the streets at night—­such precautions are made if the girl she is out after dark.  And yes, but the parents are right.  There is truly a tiger who roams in the black, but his name—­eet is Man!

“Think just for a moment, ma cherie.  Why are chaperons require’—­even in the highest, most culture’ society?  Why is marriage require’?  Is it not because all the world knows well that a man cannot be left to his own promise, but has to be bound by the law as a lion is held in a cage?”

“No,” said Mary, shaking her head, “I’m sure it isn’t that way.  You’re simply turning things around and making everything seem horrid.”

“You think so, ma cherie?  Eh, bien.  Three husbands I’ve had.  I am not without experience.”

“But you might as well say that woman is man’s natural enemy—­”

“And some say that,” said Ma’m nodding darkly.  “Left to himself, they say, man might aspire to be as the gods; but halways at his helbow is a woman like a figure of fate—­and she—­she keeps him down where he belongs—­”

“I hate all that,” said Mary quietly.  “Every once in a while I read something like it in a book or a magazine, and whenever I do, I put the book down and open the window and breathe the fresh air.  Of course I know some married people aren’t happy.  But it isn’t always because they are married.  Single people are unhappy, too.  Aunt Patty has indigestion sometimes, and I suppose a lot of people do.  But you wouldn’t call food a natural enemy; would you?  And some children are just as bad as they can be.  But you wouldn’t call children natural enemies, would you—­or try to get along without them?”