“Were you thinking of going on to the Conventional Club tonight, Mr. Delancy?” she was saying.

“I don’t belong,” said Jack.  “Mrs. Delancy said she didn’t care for it.”

“Oh, I don’t care for it, for myself,” replied Carmen.

“I do,” struck in Miss Tavish.  “It’s awfully nice.”

“Yes, it does seem to fill a want.  Why, what do you do with your evenings, Mr. Delancy?”

“Well, here’s one of them.”

“Yes, I know, but I mean between twelve o’clock and bedtime.”

“Oh,” said Jack, laughing out loud, “I go to bed—­sometimes.”

“Yes, ’there’s always that.  But you want some place to go to after the theatres and the dinners; after the other places are shut up you want to go somewhere and be amused.”

“Yes,” said Jack, falling in, “it is a fact that there are not many places of amusement for the rich; I understand.  After the theatres you want to be amused.  This Conventional Club is—­”

“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.”