“’You actually mean, my child, that you are thinking about subjects to which your husband objects, and you refuse to stop when he asks you to?  Surely you must know that he has some good reason for objecting.’

“‘I suppose so,’ I said, ’but he has not made that reason clear to me; and certainly I have a right—­’

“She would not hear any more than that.  ’Right, Sylvia?  Right?  Are you claiming the right to drive your husband from you?’

“’But surely I can’t regulate all my thinking by the fear of driving my husband from me!’

“‘Sylvia, you take my breath away.  Where did you get such ideas?’

“‘But answer me, Aunt Varina—­can I?’

“’What thinking is as important to a woman as thinking how to please a good, kind husband?  What would become of her family if she no longer tried to do this?’

“So you see, we opened up a large subject.  I know you consider me a backward person, and you may be interested to learn that there are some to whom I seem a terrifying rebel.  Picture poor Aunt Varina, her old face full of concern, repeating over and over, ’My child, my child, I hope I have come in time!  Don’t scorn the advice of a woman who has paid bitterly for her mistakes.  You have a good husband, a man who loves you devotedly; you are one of the most fortunate of women—­now do not throw your happiness away!’

“‘Aunt Varina,’ I said (I forget if I ever told you that her husband gambled and drank, and finally committed suicide) ’Aunt Varina, do you really believe that every man is so anxious to get away from his wife that it must take her whole stock of energy, her skill in diplomacy, to keep him?’

“‘Sylvia,’ she answered, “you put things so strangely, you use such horribly crude language, I don’t know how to talk to you!’ (That must be your fault, Mary.  I never heard such a charge before.) ’I can only tell you this—­that the wife who permits herself to think about other things than her duty to her husband and her children is taking a frightful risk.  She is playing with fire, Sylvia—­she will realize too late what it means to set aside the wisdom of her sex, the experience of other women for ages and ages!’

“So there you are, Mary!  I am studying another unwritten book, the Maxims of Aunt Varina!

“She has found the remedy for my troubles, the cure for my disease of thought—­I am to sew!  I tell her that I have more clothes than I can wear in a dozen seasons, and she answers, in an awesome voice, ‘There is the little stranger!’ When I point out that the little stranger will be expected to have a ‘layette’ costing many thousands of dollars, she replies, ’They will surely permit him to wear some of the things his mother’s hands have made.’  So, behold me, seated on the gallery, learning fancy stitches—­and with Kautsky on the Social Revolution hidden away in the bottom of my sewing-bag!”