THE senator and Egeria sat in the rich man’s tent—a marble palace by the sea—and the little nook in the supper room upon which they had fastened their desire was at last untenanted. Now they slipped into the recently vacated chairs with a smile of content into each other’s eyes across the board.

“A moment ago,” said the senator, unfolding his napkin, “we gazed at those who slowly sipped their coffee and wished that our belief still held its lost Paradise—Hell—that we might mentally consign them thither. A moment since we were the people, hungry, clamorous, watching them ‘spill the bread and spoil the wine.’ In the twinkling of an eye our attitude changed. We now look with indifferent scorn upon the waiting mob, and advise them if they have no bread to eat cake. What a range of experience it gives us! We are one with the labor agitator elevated to the presidency of a trust. We are the men in the saddle—after us, the deluge!”

“We are the conquerors, at any rate,” observed Egeria. “Ours is this delicate pÂtÉ, this soft, smooth wine. Vive le rich man! May he entertain oftener! It is unsurpassed.”

“Save by Nature,” returned the senator. “You have failed to notice that she too entertains to-night. What a fÊte! The sea dashing the froth of its ‘night and its might’ against the wall, that arch of honeysuckle, sweeter than a bank of violets, and yonder pale siren, the moon! Fair to-night, I drink to you!”

“After all,” mused Egeria, “the high gods bestowed on Nature a woman’s privilege—the last word. Art may declaim, Science explain, Religion dogmatize; but Nature has the last word.”

“And the last word, the one word, the eternal word, is ‘beauty,’” he amended.

Egeria shrugged her shoulders. “A matter of surfaces. The mask nature wears to hide her hideous processes of decay. As the lovely heroine of a recent novel says, ‘the beauty that rules the world is lodged in the epidermis.’”

“A superficial and essentially feminine point of view,” commented the senator. “Beauty”—with a wave of the hand—“is a matter of the soul. The skin-deep variety is not worth considering.”

“But most women would pay the price of a pound of radium for that infinitesimal depth,” she returned, flippantly.

“Your sex is hardly a judge of what constitutes feminine beauty.” There was condescension in the senator’s tone. “Here, I can prove the point for you. Grant me your indulgence and I will tell you a little story.” The senator rather fancied himself as a raconteur.

“There was once a woman who was regarded by all the men of her acquaintance as ugly, stupid and tiresome, and by all the women who knew her as beautiful, brilliant, fascinating and altogether delightful. Their different points of view led to so much discussion and bickering that they finally decided to submit the matter to a referee, a wise old fellow, who, after a very thorough acquaintance with the world and its works, had elected to spend the remainder of his days in seclusion.

“The philosopher kindly consented to decide the matter, and consequently gave the lady in question due study. Ultimately he announced his decision.

“‘Both sides are right,’ he said. ‘She is the ugliest, stupidest, most aggressive creature on earth; but masculine indifference and dislike have thrown such a halo about her that all women see her as beautiful and charming.’”

During the recital of this tale, a flush had risen on Egeria’s cheek, and she tapped her foot with growing impatience upon the floor. Barely had he finished when she cried, explosively:

“I hate men! Your fable proves nothing but the ineffable conceit of your sex!”

The senator pursued his advantage. “I saw a similar remark in a book I was reading the other day”—pleasantly. “‘I hate men,’ said one woman to another; ‘I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea.’

“‘Then,’ replied the woman to whom she spoke, ‘we would all be purchasing diving bells.’

“But”—hastily, as Egeria half rose—“you really don’t consider women judges of what constitutes feminine beauty?”

“The only judges. We are not dazzled, hypnotized, by a mere matter of exquisite coloring, the fugitive glance of too expressive eyes. We are able to bring a calm, unbiased scrutiny to bear upon it, to fully analyze it. We do not confuse beauty with charm.”

“Are the two, then, distinct?” he pondered.

“Are they distinct?” repeated Egeria, scornfully. “Are they distinct? Some one—a man, of course—has said that if Cleopatra had been without a front tooth the whole history of the world would have been changed; and Heine, you remember, when asked about Madame de StaËl, remarked that, had Helen looked so, Troy would not have known a siege. Absurd! The sirens of this world who have swayed men’s hearts and imaginations have never been dependent on their front teeth or their back hair. If Cleopatra had lost a whole row, Antony and every other man who knew her would have insisted that women in the full possession of their molars were repulsive.”

“Ah!” cried the senator, triumphantly, “your words justify me. Beauty is some subtle essence of the soul, as I said.”

A faint, malicious sparkle brightened Egeria’s eyes. “Really, now, would you call the sirens of this world soulful creatures? They were and are psychologists, intuitive diviners of a man’s moods, capable of meeting him on every side of his nature; but——”

“Do you mean,” interrupted the senator, his eyes reflecting the sparkle of hers, “that their dominion over us is through an intellectual comprehension of our moods?”

“Good heavens, no!” disclaimed Egeria, in shocked tones. “Who said anything about the intellectual faculties of woman? I hear enough of them at my club. What I am trying to get at is that beauty without charm has always received a very frigid appreciation. Men prate of it, adore it, yawn, and—leave it. Of the two, they infinitely prefer charm without beauty. Now, senator, what is it you really admire in women?”

“I will tell you if you tell me first what women really admire in men?”

“Ah!” cried Egeria, with complacency, “there we have the advantage of you. We show twice the solid, substantial reasons for the faith that is in us that you do. Woman admires in man masculinity, virility; then brains, ability, distinction. She may loudly profess her devotion to ‘the carpet knight so trim.’ ‘Such a dear, thoughtful fellow, so sweet and sympathetic!’ But her secret preference is profoundly for the one who is ‘in stern fight a warrior grim, in camp a leader sage.’ She has not altered since the Stone Age, not in the least degree. When she was dragged by the hair from her accustomed cave to make a happy home in a new one, do you fancy she gave a thought to the recent companion of her joys and sorrows who was lying somewhere with his head stove in? Not she. Her pity was swallowed up in admiration for the victor, who, lightly ignoring the marks of her teeth and nails, haled her along to his den. It is to the strong men of this earth that the heart of woman goes out.

“Printed articles on the home,” she went on, with light derision, “are always urging husbands to show the same tender attention and loving courtesies to their wives after marriage as before. In reality, nothing would so bore a woman. Man is an idealist; woman is intensely practical. She would infinitely prefer to have him out winning the bread and butter and jam than sitting at her feet, penning sonnets to her eyebrow. After an experience of the before-wedded, tender courtesies, she would exclaim: ‘John, please don’t be such a fool. I am so sick of this lovey-dovey business, that I would really enjoy a good beating.’

“You see, she knows instinctively that ‘man’s love is of his life, a thing apart,’ and that, if he prefers showing her lover-like attentions to ranging the court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart, she has a freak on her hands. But how I run on; and you haven’t told me yet what it is that men admire in women?”

“Beauty,” still insisted the senator, enthusiastically. “Goodness, truth, constancy, amiability!”

Egeria looked at him with reproach. “Do you really mean it?”—earnestly.

“Of course I do”—surprised at her tone.

“I dare say any man to whom I put the question would answer in the same way.” Her eyebrows expressed resignation. “Stay, I will phrase it differently; why do you think you love a particular woman?”

The senator could not resist the opportunity. “Because she is you!”—gallantly.

“Stop trifling.” Egeria was becoming petulant. “This is a serious matter. Now, answer properly; why do you think you love a particular woman?”

“Because”—emphatically—“I imagine her, rightly or wrongly, to be the possessor of those qualities I have enumerated.”

Egeria sighed. “And you still stick to it?”

“Of course I do,” he responded, with assurance.

She shook her head. “Nonsense! Men are less exacting than you think—and more. They ask neither beauty nor grace nor unselfishness of woman; they demand but one thing—you must charm me. For me you must possess that indefinable quality we call magnetism. Emerson puts it all in a nutshell, voices the essentially masculine point of view:”

“But,” combated the senator, “you must admit that Solomon had ample opportunity to make a study of your sex, and he reserved all his praise for the good woman, averring that her price was above rubies.”

Egeria’s smile was faintly cynical. “That was in his capacity as philosopher. As mere man, he gave the rubies and an immortal song to a Shulamite girl who looked at him with youth in her smile and laughter in her eyes.”

“A tribute to beauty,” contested the senator.

“Not at all. Because she fascinated him.”

“And the secret of fascination is beauty,” he triumphed.

She refused to admit it. “The secret of fascination lies with the woman who can convince a man that under no circumstances could she possibly bore him.”

The senator was still argumentative. “I continue to maintain that beauty is some subtle essence of the soul.”

“But the last word, the one word, the eternal word,” quoted Egeria, rising, “is that beauty is——”

“What?” he questioned, eagerly.

“In the eye of the beholder.”