He shook his head happily and took the broad low steps as a boy might—­two or three at a time.  Everything now seemed possible to him.  “She is in an angel’s temper,” he thought.  “She has divined between the wrong and the right.  She will throw the wrong over forever.”

And Jane watched him up the stairs with womanly pleasure.  She said to herself, “How handsome he is!  How good he is!  There are none like him.”  Then her face clouded, and she went into the parlor and sat down.  She knew there was a trying conversation before her, but, “John cannot resist the argument of my beauty,” she thought, “It is sure to prevail.”  In a few moments she continued her reflections.  “I may be weak enough to give a promise for the future, but I will never, never, admit I was wrong in the past.  Make your stand there, Jane Hatton, for if he ever thinks you did wrong knowingly, you will lose all your influence over him.”

During dinner and while the butler was in the room the conversation was kept upon general subjects, and John in this interval spoke of Akers’ wish to join the Gentlemen’s Club.

“I am not astonished,” answered Jane.  “Mrs. Will Clough and her daughter arrived in my Club a year ago.  They are very pushing and what they call ‘advanced.’  They do not believe that the earth is the Lord’s nor yet that it belongs to man.  They think it is woman’s own heritage.  And they want the name of the Club changed.  It has always been the Society Club.  Mrs. William Clough thinks a society club is shockingly behind the times; and she proposed changing it to the Progressive Club.  She said we were all, she hoped, progressive women.”

“Well, Jane, my dear, this is interesting.  What next?”

“Mrs. Israel Akers said she had been told that ’very few of the old-fashioned women were left in Hatton, that even the women in the mills were progressing and getting nearer and nearer to the modern ideal’; and she added in a plaintive voice, ’I’m a good bit past seventy, and I hope some old-fashioned women will live as long as I do, that we may be company for each other.’  Mrs. Clough told her, ’she would soon learn to love the new woman,’ and she said plain out, ’Nay not I!  I can’t understand her, and I doan’t know what she means.’  Then Mrs. Brierly spoke of the ‘old woman’ as a downtrodden ‘creature’ not to be put in comparison with the splendid ‘new woman’ who was beginning to arrive.  I’m sure, John, it puzzles me.”

“I can only say, Jane, that the ‘old woman’ has filled her position for millenniums with honor and affection, almost with adoration.  I would not like to say what will be the result of her taking to men’s ways and men’s work.”

“You know, John, you cannot judge one kind of woman from the other kind.  They are so entirely different.  Women have been kept so ignorant.  Now they place culture and knowledge before everything.”

“Surely not before love, Jane?”

“Yes, indeed!  Some put knowledge and progress—­always progress—­before everything else.”