“Upon my word, Mr. Allen, I am disgusted with you,” said the second voice; “I have not found a man yet who would speak a good word for him.  But I did not think it of you.”

A woman’s tongue, like a firearm, is a dangerous weapon, and often strikes where it is least expected.  I saw with a wicked delight that the shot had told, for the Celebrity blushed to the roots of his hair, while Miss Trevor dropped three or four stitches.

“I do not see how you can expect men to like ’The Sybarites’,” she said, with some heat; “very few men realize or care to realize what a small chance the average woman has.  I know marriage isn’t a necessary goal, but most women, as well as most men, look forward to it at some time of life, and, as a rule, a woman is forced to take her choice of the two or three men that offer themselves, no matter what they are.  I admire a man who takes up the cudgels for women, as he has done.”

“Of course we admire him,” they cried, as soon as Miss Trevor had stopped for breath.

“And can you expect a man to like a book which admits that women are the more constant?” she went on.

“Why, Irene, you are quite rabid on the subject,” said the second voice; “I did not say I expected it.  I only said I had hoped to find Mr. Allen, at least, broad enough to agree with the book.”

“Doesn’t Mr. Allen remind you a little of Desmond?” asked the first voice, evidently anxious to avoid trouble.

“Do you know whom he took for Desmond, Mr. Allen?  I have an idea it was himself.”

Mr. Allen, had now recovered some of his composure.

“If so, it was done unconsciously,” he said.  “I suppose an author must put his best thoughts in the mouth of his hero.”

“But it is like him?” she insisted.

“Yes, he holds the same views.”

“Which you do not agree with.”

“I have not said I did not agree with them,” he replied, taking up his own defence; “the point is not that men are more inconstant than women, but that women have more excuse for inconstancy.  If I remember correctly, Desmond, in a letter to Rosamond, says:  ’Inconstancy in a woman, because of the present social conditions, is often pardonable.  In a man, nothing is more despicable.’  I think that is so.  I believe that a man should stick by the woman to whom he has given his word as closely as he sticks by his friends.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the aggressive second voice, “that is all very well.  But how about the woman to whom he has not given his word?  Unfortunately, the present social conditions allow a man to go pretty far without a definite statement.”

At this I could not refrain from looking at Miss Trevor.  She was bending over her knitting and had broken her thread.

“It is presumption for a man to speak without some foundation,” said the Celebrity, “and wrong unless he is sure of himself.”

“But you must admit,” the second voice continued, “that a man has no right to amuse himself with a woman, and give her every reason to believe he is going to marry her save the only manly and substantial one.  And yet that is something which happens every day.  What do you think of a man who deserts a woman under those conditions?”