“It must be nice to be a man,” said Sally.

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know; to dine where you like, find out these quaint little places, never to have to think of the impression you give by what you do.”

He leaned back in his chair, and smiled at her.  “We have to think just as much as you do, in most of the things we really want to do.  I didn’t want particularly to dine in such a place as this, that evening I came here.  It seemed no liberty to me.  There are things I might give the world to be able to do, yet haven’t the liberty.  What do you want with liberty—­the liberty to come and go wherever you please?” He smiled at her again.  “What good would it do you?”

Sally wondered what Miss Hallard would say if she were to hear this.  She wondered what she would have said herself, had the expression of such ideas come from Mr. Arthur.  There was no doubt that she would have repudiated them with vehement denial.  With Traill she said nothing—­felt that he was right.  Why was that?  She could not tell.  It was beyond her power to analyze the situation as closely as it required.  It was beyond her ability to realize that a man may say he is the son of God, if it be that he has behind the words the power of the personality of a Jesus Christ.  Traill had the personality—­the dominance behind him in what he said—­that was all.  He might have told her that women were only the chattels of men, born to slavery, the property of their masters, and she would not have denied it to him.

“What in the name of God are women?” he had said more than once in his life—­“Is one of them ever worth all the while?” And he thought he had meant it.  To a great extent, he acted up to it as well.  These are the questions that men of the type put to themselves over and over again—­but there are Cleopatras to mate with Antonys, Helens of Troy and Lady Hamiltons who can snap their fingers in the face of such odds and win.  But Sally was not of this blood.  She is the lamb that goes willing to the slaughter, the woman, whom a man like Traill, when once he holds the trembling threads of her affection, can drive to the uttermost.

“Then you give no liberty to a woman?” she said.

“No—­not the liberty she talks about.  Not the idea of liberty that she gets from these suffragist pamphleteers.”

“I’d like you to meet my friend, Miss Hallard,” said Sally.

“Why?  Who’s Miss Hallard?  What is she?”

“She’s an artist—­I share rooms with her.”

“Why would you like me to meet her?”

“I’d like to hear you two argue.  She thinks just the opposite.  She thinks—­”

“I never argue with a woman,” Traill interrupted.

“You think so poorly of us?” She tried to say it with spirit—­struck the flint in her eyes, contracted her lips to the hard, thin line.

“As women?  No—­the very best.”  Her looks did not worry him.  Water pouring over marble runs off as smoothly.  “You want to be judged as men—­you never will be till you can cut your hair short and dress the part.  Clothes have the deuce of a lot to do with it.  I can love a woman, but, my God, I can’t argue with her.”