IT is delightful to talk to a bishop,” smiled Egeria; “it immediately becomes a serious duty to be frivolous.”

“And why, pray?” The bishop looked slightly bewildered.

“To afford you the pleasures of contrast. To convince you from the start that one woman does not seek priestly counsel, nor intend to bore you with the vagaries of her soul.”

The bishop smiled benignly, deprecatingly and yet comprehendingly. He even shook his head in paternal and playful admonition.

“Oh, I know us,” Egeria assured him. “A woman, if she is young, is always either occupied with her heart or her soul. When the one absorbs her the other doesn’t. When she’s in love she forgets all about her soul. When she’s out of love she turns to it again. Then she yearns for incense, altar lights and a pale, young priest, who is willing to devote time and prayer to assuaging her spiritual doubts. She doesn’t care in the least to be spiritually directed by any well-fed, commonplace parson with a fat wife and a pack of rosy children. No, no, a wistful young ascetic, with hollows under his eyes—wan and worn with fasting and vigils. She is perfectly aware that he has ultimately not the ghost of a show; but she is entirely willing that he shall have a run for his money. In fact, she hopes that the struggle may be keen and prolonged. To play a game fish which is putting up the fight of its life is infinitely more exciting than to languidly reel in the line and secure a victim which has not made the least resistance.”

The bishop smiled tolerantly, tapping his finger tips together. “Doubtless correct, doubtless correct. Your astuteness and intellectual acumen have always elicited my admiration.”

A sparkle of annoyance brightened Egeria’s eyes.

“Checkmate,” she murmured, with a little bow of deference.

The bishop raised his brows innocently.

“Oh, you know,” continued Egeria, resentfully, “that there is one compliment a woman never forgives, and that is a tribute to her intellect at the expense of her power of attraction. If the lure the serpent taught her is vain, then is her destiny barren, her desire unfulfilled.”

“You deserved it,” laughed the bishop; “but, dear lady, have you ever paused to consider what a debt of gratitude the world owes us? When I listen to the outpourings of overcharged feminine hearts, and read the diaries, confessions and novels of innumerable women, I am forced to the conclusion that the church thoroughly understood one of the first needs of a woman’s heart when it established the confessional. Then man, with his restless, protesting conscience, did his best to estrange you from the consolation, and, in consequence, some eccentric, undisciplined creature now and again voices to the world the disorganized, hysterical feminine emotions which should have been discreetly sobbed into the ecclesiastical ear, decently entombed in the silence of the confessional.”

There was a faint wrinkle of displeasure in Egeria’s brow. “Admitted, admitted”—hastily—“and thank you kindly, dear bishop, for your little criticism of us. It makes it quite possible for me to discuss the clergy if I wish. Now I can ask, without being impertinent, a question which has long puzzled me. Why is it that you prelates and the princes of the church are almost invariably tolerant, delightfully broad-minded and free from bias, while the rank and file are so frequently strenuous and discomposing? For instance, last summer I was thrown, through force of circumstances, with a sallow-faced, stoop-shouldered preacher, who always spoke of himself as ‘a minister of the gospel.’ Whenever his dyspepsia was especially severe he informed his parishioners that he had girded on his armor and was prepared to rebuke evil in high places, and that he would be recalcitrant to his trust if he did not lift up his voice to condemn civic rottenness and social degeneracy. His wife was ‘an estimable lady,’ with the figure of a suburbanite who only wears stays in the evening, and a pronounced taste for the clinging perfume of moth balls. No children having blessed their union, they decided to adopt some definite aim in life. They were talking it over once when I was present.

“‘There are the sick and the poor; I am sure there are plenty of them,’ suggested the lady.

“Her husband looked at her scornfully, and coldly remarked that that field was full of reapers.

“‘Oh, you mean to stand up openly in the pulpit and rebuke the rich men who make their money in queer ways!’ she exclaimed, excitedly.

“‘And offend half my wealthy parishioners by branding them as thieves on insufficient evidence?’ he thundered. ‘Are you insane?’

“Finally, however, being a shrewd creature, he solved the problem and incidentally won for himself a great deal of gratuitous advertising. They organized a society for the suppression of bridge—aware that the public loves sensational details regarding women of position; the insidious cocktail—the public delights to know that the social leaders look too often upon the wine when it’s red; ostracising divorcÉes—women thus having the sanction of Heaven for attacking their own sex. Oh, it was a holy crusade in a teapot, and made him quite famous; and, bishop, what do you think was the motto of the organization?”

The bishop shook his head. Mild curiosity was in his eyes; but the shake of his head was distinctly reproving.

“The watchword chosen,” chuckled Egeria, “was, ‘Neither do I condemn thee.’ Now, bishop, tell me, please, what makes the difference between his type of man and yours?”

A humorous twinkle shone in the bishop’s eye, then he leaned forward and whispered one word in Egeria’s ear: “Money.”

She laughed, and then returned to her muttons. “But, really, quite under the rose, do you not become fearfully bored sometimes by the various manifestations of the feminine temperament?”

“It may be a trifle self-conscious, a little inclined to regard itself pathologically,” admitted the bishop, with caution.

“It is frequently yellow,” said Egeria. decisively. “Why don’t you clergymen and novelists occasionally tell us the truth?”

“We must fill our churches and sell our books, I suppose,” returned the bishop, half whimsically, half regretfully. “What would you say, Lady Egeria, if we put you in orders, and disregarding St. Paul’s advice, let you occupy the pulpit? Would you thunder denunciations at poor, defenseless women?”

“I’d have a fine time,” cried Egeria her eyes alight. “I would do what you sermonizers and novel writers haven’t the courage to do—just tell them the truth about themselves. Chide them for their frivolities and extravagances and vanities? Not I. They don’t care a straw for that. No, no, I should have a new evangel and a new text. It should be: ‘Play the game gamely, and don’t whine if you lose.’ Now, bishop, confess that you never meet a strange woman that you do not observe a speculative gleam in her eye which long experience has taught you to interpret as: ‘How soon can I tell him my troubles?’”

“Poor ladies! You have so many,” sighed the bishop, sympathetically.

“Of course we have, we multiply them by three. To sedulously observe all tragic and harrowing anniversaries is a part of our religion. ‘It’s just five years ago to-day since Edwin left me for another,’ she says, mournfully, and then, shrouding herself in gloom, lives over each poignant, past moment. If anyone ask the cause of her dejected demeanor, she murmurs, in a sad, sweet voice: ‘It is an anniversary. Would you like to hear of my grief?’

“But what does a man do? He says: ‘Jove! It’s just a year ago to-morrow since Jemima was run down by an automobile. I must keep myself well amused or it may be a depressing occasion.’

“Seriously, bishop, if I were you, I’d have a phonograph in my study, and the moment a woman set foot within the door it should begin that good old hymn: ‘Go bury thy sorrow, the world hath its share.’”

“But what can the poor things do,” asked the bishop, “if they may not turn to their clergyman for consolation and comfort?”

“Twang on Emerson’s iron string: ‘Trust thyself.’ Why always twine about a pole, like a limp pea vine, and flop on the ground the minute the upholding stick is withdrawn? Imagine the emotions of the pole, if it were sentient! At first it would say: ‘Delicate, dainty pea vine, lean on me, the clasp of your myriad tendrils fills me with rapture. How sweet is your adorable dependence!’ But in time: ‘Oh! stifling, smothering pea vine, I am suffocated by your deadening passivity. Would I could tear myself free from your throbbing tendrils.’”

“You evidently believe in the dead burying their dead,” said the bishop, meditatively.

“No sounder philosophy was ever enjoined on a living world. Let the dead—dead pasts, dead lives, dead loves, dead memories—bury their dead. Ah, bishop, the great art of life is the art of forgetting.”

“You, Madame Egeria, are inclined to philosophize.”

“Sir, do not remind me of it! When we offer sacrifices at the altar of laughter, you may look for gray hairs and crows’ feet. Tears and passion belong to youth: that season of fleeting and exquisite joys, of tragic and fugitive griefs, of tempestuous and restless longings. Youth, with the passionate voice of Maurice de Guerin, cries eternally: ‘The road of the wayfarer is a joyous one. Ah, who shall set me adrift upon the waters of the Nile?’”

“And in maturity we learn to fold our hands and stop our ears and take refuge in the commonplace.” The bishop’s tone was tinged with bitterness.

“Ah, no, no!” Egeria was vehement. “We learn that the Nile, with its dream-haunted shores, flows by our door; that wherever a patch of sunlight falls is beauty, wherever a morning-glory blows is art.”

The bishop fell in with her mood. “That is it. Maturity is nothing if it is not expansion.

He loved to quote.

“Yes,” exclaimed Egeria, “‘more life, fuller life, more work, more play, more experience, more of the dreams that scale the stars, more of the splendid, inexorable life of earth. But”—looking at him doubtfully—“we are getting horribly didactic and prosy, and we are a thousand miles away from the feminine temperament.”

“Is there anything left of it?” inquired the bishop, mildly.

Egeria ignored him. “You have only expressed yourself guardedly, while I have talked and talked,” she complained.

“I shall be equally fluent.” The twinkle shone again in his eye. “But my opinion is given in confidence. I throw myself on your discretion.”

“Assuredly,” murmured Egeria.

“Very well, then”—lowering his voice—“I am like the old Englishman who said: ‘I have always found a most horrid, romantic perverseness in your sex. To do and to love what you should not is meat, drink and vesture to you all.’ And I also know that—