“I tell you what it is.  It’s a sort of Midnight Mission for the rich.  They never have had anything of the kind in the city.”

“And it’s very nice,” said Miss Tavish, demurely.

The performers are selected.  You can see things there that you want to see at other places to which you can’t go.  And everybody you know is there.”

“Oh, I see,” said Jack.  “It’s what the Independent Theatre is trying to do, and what all the theatrical people say needs to be done, to elevate the character of the audiences, and then the managers can give better plays.”

“That’s just it.  We want to elevate the stage,” Carmen explained.

“But,” continued Jack, “it seems to me that now the audience is select and elevated, it wants to see the same sort of things it liked to see before it was elevated.”

“You may laugh, Mr. Delancy,” replied Carmen, throwing an earnest simplicity into her eyes, “but why shouldn’t women know what is going on as well as men?”

“And why,” Miss Tavish asked, “will the serpentine dances and the London topical songs do any more harm to women than to men?”

“And besides, Mr. Delancy,” Carmen said, chiming in, “isn’t it just as proper that women should see women dance and throw somersaults on the stage as that men should see them?  And then, you know, women are such a restraining influence.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Jack.  “I thought the Conventional was for the benefit of the audience, not for the salvation of the performers.”

“It’s both.  It’s life.  Don’t you think women ought to know life?  How are they to take their place in the world unless they know life as men know it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know whose place they are to take, the serpentine dancer’s or mine,” said Jack, as if he were studying a problem.  “How does your experiment get on, Miss Tavish?”

Carmen looked up quickly.

“Oh, I haven’t any experiment,” said Miss Tavish, shaking her head.  “It’s just Mr. Delancy’s nonsense.”

“I wish I had an experiment.  There is so little for women to do.  I wish I knew what was right.”  And Carmen looked mournfully demure, as if life, after all, were a serious thing with her.

“Whatever Mrs. Henderson does is sure to be right,” said Jack, gallantly.

Carmen shot at him a quick sympathetic glance, tempered by a grateful smile.  “There are so many points of view.”

Jack felt the force of the remark as he did the revealing glance.  And he had a swift vision of Miss Tavish leading him a serpentine dance, and of Carmen sweetly beckoning him to a pleasant point of view.  After all it doesn’t much matter.  Everything is in the point of view.