shall set out on his high adventure in quest of her.  But he is beginning to see through her.  He has her fate in the test-tube of his scientific laboratories to-day.  She has refused to join him as a comrade in armour; she has preferred to remain the vehicle of reproduction, the prize of his play-times, his allurement, his passenger.  Then let her remain so.  Man is going to keep her under.  Think what has been done in plastic surgery, what is being done in what I call plastic psychology!  Think what selection has done in the breeding of lower forms of life.  And then let woman tremble!  If she is perpetually going to chain man in the meshes of her hair, the curves of her fingers, he is going to get rid of her—­except as a thing for pleasure and for use.  Most of the time he hugs his chains.  One day he will get clear vision, realize that woman has got too much for him and—­limit her!  It is, to some extent, being done unconsciously already.  Why is it a disgrace to be the mother of a girl-child in certain Oriental countries?  Why do they drown girl-babies in the Ganges?  It is simply that they realize the danger of this softness, this overlordship of women!  Clearer thinking than we, they see the menace of femininity.  We of the West will soon see that woman has been the passenger in the rather frail life-boat of the world.  And in self defence we shall put her overboard before long—­unless—­unless—­she takes an oar."

“Lord, he does lap into them, doesn’t he?” said Louis, gleefully.

She frowned and pondered.

“I think you are ungenerous, all of you,” she said softly.  “Men seem such unbalanced children to me.  Wanting to put women overboard.”

She looked at Louis, and they both broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter as they recalled that that was exactly what she had literally done with an annoying man.

“Perhaps we’re all ungenerous,” she said presently.  “I believe we are ungenerous towards the thing that chains us.  It’s only natural.  But I don’t think that you or the author of ‘John Barleycorn’ or poor de Quincey ought really to put drugs and drink and all that out of the world at all.  You ought to live with them in the world, and not let them chain you.  Don’t you think so?  And—­poor Professor Kraill!  Isn’t he wistful about the stuffiness of women’s hair?  Oh Louis, do you know what it reminds me of?”

He lit a cigarette, watching her with amused tolerance.

“Knollys put a horrible sticky fly-paper in the stewards’ pantry one day.  I was looking at it, and wishing flies needn’t be made at all.  Then I wished I could let the poor things all loose, no matter how horrible they are.  There was one big bluebottle that had got stuck there on his back with his wings in the sticky stuff.  He struggled and struggled till—­Oh, horrible!—­his wings came off.  Then he crawled and crawled, over other dead flies till he got to the edge of the paper.  And he went all wobbly and horrible because nearly all his legs had got pulled off.”