Hamilton stirred presently, turned, and threw himself heavily into the nearest chair, whence he stared curiously at his wife with morose eyes of resentment. Cicily felt the scrutiny, but she did not lift her gaze to his. She was not shirking the conflict between them, which seemed inevitable after this last episode; but she was minded to let her husband begin the attack. In her turn, she sought a chair, into which she sank gracefully, and rested in a pose of languid indifference that was fascinating in itself, but at this moment for some inexplicable reason peculiarly aggravating to the man. It may be that her apparent ease at a critical period in their fortunes appealed to him as hatefully incongruous; it may be that the gracious femininity of her, her desirability as a woman, thus revealed by the lissome lassitude of her body, emphasized the fact that she was a creature created for joy and dalliance, not for the rasping stratagems of the market-place. Whatever the cause, it is certain that the lazy abandon of her posture irritated him, and it was with an attempt to veil his chagrin that at last he spoke:

"Well," he exclaimed petulantly, "some more of your work, I see!"

Cicily, however, disguised the fact that she winced under the contempt in his tone.

"Yes," she answered eagerly. "Now, don't you see that I was right?"

The device did not suffice to divert Hamilton from his purpose of rebuke.

"So," he went on, speaking roughly, "not content with forgetting your duty, not satisfied with your dreary failure as a wife, you've turned traitor, too."

"You seem to forget that it was yourself who failed in your duty—not I," Cicily retorted.

"Is that trumped up, farcical idea, your excuse for fighting me?"

"I'm not making any excuses," Cicily replied, stiffly. "And for the simple and very sufficient reason that I am not fighting you."

"Then, what under heaven do you call it?" Hamilton demanded, with a sneer. "Is it by any chance saving me?"

"Yes, I'd do that," came the courageous statement, "if only you'd let me."

"And your manner of doing it," Hamilton went on, still in a tone of sneering contempt, "I suppose would be by going on the way you have been going—giving money to my enemies, and so prolonging the strike, and so ruining me!"

"I do believe you are blind!" Cicily declared, angrily. She changed her pose to one of erect alertness, and her eyes flashed fire at her husband. "Is it possible that you don't appreciate why I gave those women money—why I helped them? Why, I wouldn't be a woman, if I didn't. As I've told you before, I was a woman before I became a wife. If keeping other women and little children from going hungry isn't wifely, isn't businesslike, then thank God I'm not wifely, not businesslike!"

"Well, you're not, all right," Hamilton announced succinctly. "I'm glad that you're satisfied with yourself—nobody else is."

"Oh, I know what you want," was the contemptuous answer. "You want the conventional, old-time wife, the sort that is always standing ready and waiting to swear that her husband is right, even when her instinct, her brain, her heart, all cry out to her that he is wrong. Well, Charles, I am not that sort of wife, nor ever will be. The real root of the trouble is that we women are changing, developing, while you men are not: you are the same. We, as a sex, are growing up, at last; your sex is standing still. The ideas our grandmothers held, the lives they led, would kill us of dry rot. But you men are just where your grandfathers were in relation to your homes and your beliefs as to the duty of your wives. Of course, your old-time wife looked up to her over-lord with reverence; she hung on his every word with profound respect; she swore by his every careless opinion, without ever daring to call her soul or her mind her own. For that matter, why shouldn't she have done so? He was educated, after some sort of fashion at least; and he went abroad into the world, where he mixed with his fellows, where he did things, good or bad; while she, poor, pretty, ignorant doll, snatched up by him in early girlhood, and afterward kept sequestered, forced to assume the tragic responsibilities of a wife and mother before she was old enough to appreciate her difficult position—what chance did she have? Now, to-day, I tell you, it is all different. We're as well educated as you men—better, oftentimes. We have discovered that we can think intelligently; we do think. We, too, go abroad into the world; we, too, do things. Best of all, we see with a new, clearer vision. And we see certain things that you men have become blinded to through centuries of usage, of selfish, careless struggling for your own ends. We are able to see with the distinctness of truth the right relation of the man and the woman—an equal relation, with equal rights for each, with equal claims on each other, with equal duties to each other in the home and in the world outside the home—partners, held together by love."

"My dear," Hamilton remarked dryly, as his wife paused, "you have omitted one salient qualification of the modern woman: she is, preËminently an orator. Why, you, yourself, are a feminine Demosthenes—nothing less." But he abandoned, his tone of raillery, as he continued: "And so, what you've been doing—that's your idea of partnership, is it?"

"Yes," Cicily declared, spiritedly. "When one partner makes a mistake, it's the duty of the other to set things straight."

"By ruining him!" the husband ejaculated, in savage distrust.

"Have I ruined you?" There was a flame of indignation in the amber eyes, and the curving lips were turned scornfully; but there was a restrained timbre of triumph in the music of her voice. "No! Why, let me tell you something: Those women are for you, already. They are helping me against their husbands. You'll win in the end—in spite of all the damage you tried to do to-day with your colossal blundering. But they're loyal to me, and they'll forgive you for my sake, and they'll give you the victory in the fight.... Just wait and see!"

"Nonsense!" Hamilton mocked. He considered his wife's assertions as merely the maunderings of an extravagant enthusiast. She was sincere—more the pity!—but she knew absolutely nothing of the problems with which she insisted on entangling herself so futilely.

"I promise you," Cicily persisted, undismayed by her husband's jeering attitude of scepticism, "that you will win in the end. Yes, you will; because it is right: that you should. I am doing my part, not only to help you; but, too, because it is right. We owe a duty not only to ourselves, but to those people as well.... Even you must see that!"

"Well, I don't," Hamilton maintained, consistently. But he winced involuntarily under the expression of pity for his ignorance that now showed in his wife's face.

"Well, it only serves to illustrate what I said," Cicily went on, with a complacency that annoyed the man almost beyond endurance. "The woman has the clearer visions nowadays. That's where we differ from our dear departed grandmothers, from our mothers even. They had a personal conscience that stopped short at the front and back doors of the home. We women of to-day have a bigger conscience, which takes in the bigger family. It's a social conscience, and that it is which makes us different from those women of the earlier generations. Don't you see, Charles, that you and I are really a sort of big brother and sister to those in our employ? So, let us help them, even if we have to do it against their own mistaken efforts of resistance."

"Of course," Hamilton suggested, still sneeringly, "Morton and Carrington, too, are our dear brothers."

For an instant, Cicily was nonplused by the question; but, of a sudden, she received one of those inspirations on which she usually relied for escape from a predicament.

"Oh, yes, indeed," she replied happily, and beamed radiantly on her astonished husband, in anticipatory enjoyment of her repartee. "They're our bad brothers, whom we must spank—hard!"

"If there's any spanking to be done, I'll attend to it, myself," Hamilton declared, gruffly.

"Oh, very well," Cicily agreed. "But you don't seem to be doing it effectively at present.... Tell me, why are they paying the men to stay on strike?"

"It must be that they recognize the brotherhood claim of which you were speaking so eloquently." The man's voice was vibrant with sarcastic indignation.

"Now, see here, Charles," Cicily remonstrated, the flush in her cheeks deepening under the rebuff in his flippant answer. "You know why they're doing it just as well as I do. It's simply because they want to keep you closed down, so that they can go on charging the independents twenty-two cents a box."

"No," the husband declared, enticed despite his will into discussing business for a moment with his wife, "they could charge them that anyhow. I couldn't interfere, because they have me tied up with a contract at eleven cents."

"Then, if I were you," Cicily argued with new animation, "I'd break that contract. Yes, I'd open up right away, pay full wages, and sell to the independents at fifteen cents a box. They'd come to you fast enough."

"Break a contract with a trust!" Hamilton jeered. He laughed aloud over the folly of this idea as a means of escape from disaster.

"What are contracts when the men are starving?" The question came with an earnestness that did more credit to the heart than to the head of the wife.

"If that isn't like a woman!" The man's tone was surcharged with disgust. "Cicily, I've had enough of this."

"Then, you won't fight?" An energetic shake of the head was the answer. "You won't help the men?" Again, the gesture of refusal. "You won't make any move at all?" A third time, the man silently denied her plea. "Then, I will!" Cicily concluded, defiantly. She leaned back in her chair, clasped her slender hands behind her head, and stared ceilingward, with the air of one who has pleasantly solved all the perplexities of life.

"Good heavens, what do you mean to do next?" Hamilton questioned, in frank alarm.

"Never mind: you'll see," came the nonchalant answer.

The contented air of the woman, coupled with her tone of assurance as she spoke, goaded the man to an assertion of authority.

"I demand that, as long as you're in my house—"

He was interrupted by the cold voice of his wife. She did not turn her eyes from their dreamy contemplation of the ceiling, nor did she alter in any way the languor of her posture, the indifference of her manner. But, somehow, the quality in her voice was insistent, and the gentle, musical tone broke on his delivery with a subtle force sufficient to halt it against his will.

"You can't demand," Cicily said, evenly. "We stopped that relationship three weeks ago."

"It is true," Hamilton answered, more quietly, "that you've refused to live with me as my wife. But, if you are to remain in my house, I must insist that you keep out of meddling with my business affairs. Otherwise, I shall be forced—"

Again, the softly spoken words from his wife's lips held a spell that checked his own, and compelled him to listen grudgingly.

"You cannot force me, Charles—for the simple reason that I won't leave. No, indeed! I am quite certain that when you think things over in a saner mood, you will be convinced of the fact that just at this time it would be highly inadvisable for you to complicate your affairs further by a public scandal. So, I tell you that I sha'n't go. I shall stay here until you are out of this mess. Since I feel that to be my duty, I shall do it!"

"Oh, Lord, if you were a man—!" Hamilton choked helplessly.

"If I were a man," was the placid conclusion offered by Cicily, "I suppose I'd sit still, and do nothing, like you. But I'm not a man, thank Heaven!... The only pity is, you won't take my perfectly good advice."

"Your advice—oh, the devil!" Hamilton sprang from his chair. His face was distraught, as he stood for a moment staring in baffled anger at his wife, who still held her eyes meditatively content on the ceiling. He clenched his hands fiercely, and shook them in impotent fury. "Your advice!" he repeated, in a voice that was nigh moaning. Then, he whirled about, and strode from the room, trampling heavily.

Cicily listened until she heard the door of the library slam noisily. In the interval, she retained her attitude of consummate ease. But, with the sound of the closing door, she was suddenly metamorphosed. Her eyes drooped wearily. She cowered within the chair as one stricken with a vertigo. The slender hands unclasped from behind her head, and shut themselves over her face. Her form was bowed together, and shaken violently. There came the sound of muffled sobs.