Smith had a standing invitation to Mrs. Bethune’s five-o’clock teas, and he was always considered an acquisition.  He was also very fond of going to them; for under no circumstances was Mrs. Bethune so charming.  To see her in this hour of perfect relaxation was to understand how great and beautiful is the art of idleness.  Her ease and grace, her charming aimlessness, her indescribable air of inaction, were all so many proofs of her having been born in the purple of wealth and fashion; no parvenu could ever hope to imitate them.

Alice Fontaine never tried.  She had been taken from a life of polite shifts and struggles by her cousin, Mrs. Bethune, two years before; and the circumstances that were to the one the mere accidents of her position were to the other a real holiday-making.

Alice met Mr. Smith with empressement, fluttered about the tea-tray like a butterfly, wasted her bonmots and the sugar recklessly, and was as full of pretty animation as her cousin Bethune was of elegant repose.

“I am glad you are come, Mr. Smith,” said Mrs. Bethune.  “Alice has been trying to spur me into a fight.  I don’t want to throw a lance in.  Now you can be my substitute.”

“Mr. Smith,” said Alice impetuously, “don’t you think that women ought to have the same rights as men?”

“Really, Miss Alice, I—­I don’t know.  When women have got what they call their ‘rights,’ do they expect to keep what they call their ‘privileges’ also?”

“Certainly they do.  When they have driven the men to emigrate, to scrub floors, and to jump into the East River, they will still expect the corner seat, the clean side of the road, the front place, and the pick of everything.”

“Ah, indeed!  And when all the public and private business of the country is in their hands, will they still expect to find time for five-o’clock teas?”

“Yes, sir.  They will conduct the affairs of this regenerated country, and not neglect either their music or their pets, their dress or their drawing-room.  They will be perfectly able to do the one, and not leave the other undone.”

“Glorious creatures!  Then they will accomplish what men have been trying to do ever since the world began.  They will get two days’ work out of one day.”

“Of course they will.”

“But how?”

“Oh, machines and management.  It will be done.”

“But your answer is illogical, Miss Alice.”

“Of course.  Men always take refuge in their logic; and yet, with all their boasted skill, they have never mastered the useful and elementary proposition, ‘It will be, because it will be.’”

Mr. Smith was very much annoyed at the tone Alice was giving to the conversation.  She was treating him as a joke, and he felt how impossible it was going to be to get Mrs. Bethune to treat him seriously.  Indeed, before he could restore the usual placid, tender tone of their tete-a-tete tea, two or three ladies joined the party, and the hour was up, and the opportunity lost.