3.  The weeks passed.  The legislature at Albany adjourned, without regard to our wishes; and so, like the patient spider whose web is destroyed, we set to work upon a new one.  So much money must be raised, so many articles must be written, so many speeches delivered, so many people seized upon and harried and wrought to a state of mind where they were dangerous to the future career of legislators.  Such is the process of social reform under the private property régime; a process which the pure and simple reformers imagine we shall tolerate for ever—­God save us!

Sylvia asked me for the news, and I told it to her—­how we had failed, and what we had to do next.  So pretty soon there came by registered mail a little box, in which I found a diamond ring.  “I cannot ask him for money just now,” she explained, “but here is something that has been mine from girlhood.  It cost about four hundred dollars—­this for your guidance in selling it.  Not a day passes that I do not see many times that much wasted; so take it for the cause.”  Queen Isabella and her jewels!

In this letter she told me of a talk she had had with her husband on the “woman-problem.”  She had thought at first that it was going to prove a helpful talk—­he had been in a fairer mood than she was usually able to induce.  “He evaded some of my questions,” she explained, “but I don’t think it was deliberate; it is simply the evasive attitude of mind which the whole world takes.  He says he does not think that women are inferior to men, only that they are different; the mistake is for them to try to become like men.  It is the old proposition of ‘charm,’ you see.  I put that to him, and he admitted that he did like to be ‘charmed.’

“I said, ’You wouldn’t, if you knew as much about the process as I do.’

“‘Why not?’ he asked.

“’Because, it’s not an honest process.  It’s not a straight way for one sex to deal with the other.’

“He asked what I meant by that; but then, remembering the cautions of my great-aunt, I laughed.  ’If you are going to compel me to use the process, you can hardly expect me to tell you the secret of it.’

“‘Then there’s no use trying to talk,’ he said.

“‘Ah, but there is!’ I exclaimed.  ’You admit that I have ’charm’—­dozens of other men admitted it.  And so it ought to count for something if I declare that I know it’s not an honest thing—­that it depends upon trickery, and appeals to the worst qualities in a man.  For instance, his vanity.  “Flatter him,” Lady Dee used to say.  “He’ll swallow it.”  And he will—­I never knew a man to refuse a compliment in my life.  His love of domination.  “If you want anything, make him think that he wants it!” His egotism.  She had a bitter saying—­I can hear the very tones of her voice:  “When in doubt, talk about HIM.”  That is what is called “charm"!’

“‘I don’t seem to feel it,’ he said.

“’ No, because now you are behind the scenes.  But when you were in front, you felt it, you can’t deny.  And you would feel it again, any time I chose to use it.  But I want to know if there is not some honest way a woman can interest a man.  The question really comes to this—­Can a man love a woman for what she really is?’