admirable patience, and now, taking her cigarette from her lips, she flicked the ash off and looked at it reflectively.

"It's a bad job," she said at last with a short sigh "a regular bad job! I'm--I'm awfully sorry for you, old boy!"

And she held out her hand to me with a sort of manly candour that was simply indescribable. I clasped that hand, I kissed it, whereupon she hastily withdrew it.

"Don't do that," she laughed. creeps! Fact, really! can't bear it! The case is as clear as daylight. wrong sister!"

"It gives me the Now listen, Willie! You've married the

"Married the wrong sister?" I echoed bewilderedly.

"Of course you have, you dear old dunderhead! You should have taken Georgie while you had the chance of a choice. She would have sat on your knee, cuddled in your arms, curled your hair with her fingers, and kissed you on the tip of your nose! That's Georgie all over! Turtle-dove and 'Mary's lamb' in one. That's what you wanted, and that's what you haven't got, poor dear! I'm not a dove, and I'm certainly not a lamb. I'm-I'm a fair specimen"-she smiled candidly-"a fair specimen of the woman of the future, and you, old boy, you want a woman of the past. Now haven't I hit it off exactly?"

I leaned back in my chair with a half groan, and she continued:

"You see, Willie, you want me to change my nature and become a big transformation scene like they have in those pantomimes, when the old witch of the piece turns into a fairy perched on the edge of a rainbow. Those things are all very well on the stage, but they can't be done in real life. You know I was at school at Brighton?"

I assented, wondering what was coming next.

"Well, there, among other accomplishments, we learnt how to ride, and our riding-master (a dashing sort of fellow, full of fun) taught us how to smoke, lessons gratis. Fact! We all learnt it-on the sly, of course, just as he flirted with us all on the sly; but we became proficients in both arts. We were fifty girls at that place, and we all smoked whenever we had the chance, and got to like it. We ate loads of scented bonbons afterwards to kill the smell, and we were never found out. Brighton schools are not celebrated for strictness, you know; the young women do pretty much as they like in every way, and get into no end of scrapes often. But that's wide of the mark. The point is, that I learnt to smoke at school, and when I came home I met lots of women who smoked also, and naturally I went on with it till the habit became second nature. Why, you

might as well ask a washerwoman to give up her tea as ask me to give up my cigar!"

"Is it so bad as that?" I stammered weakly.

"Yes, it is 'so bad as that'-or so good!" she laughed amiably. "You used not to have such violent prejudices, Willie! You've smoked enough yourself, I'm sure!"

"But, Honoria, I am different

"I began.

"Pardon me," she interposed smilingly; "that is just what I cannot see! I do not understand why there should be any difference between the customs of men and the customs of women."

"Good God!" I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and speaking with some excitement. "Do you mean to say that women are capable of doing everything that men do? Can you contemplate a battle being fought by women? Could they undertake a naval engagement? Are women fit to lay down railways, build bridges and construct canals? Will they break stones on the road and drive hansom-cabs and omnibuses? Will they become stokers and porters? Will they dig wells and put up telegraph wires? I tell you, Honoria, this craze, this mania for striving to make women the equals of men, is as wicked as it is unnatural, and can engender nothing but misery to the nation as well as to the individual!"

"In what rank, then, would you propose to place

woman," demanded Honoria calmly, "if she is not (as I hold she is) the equal of man? Is she his inferior or superior?"

"She is his inferior in physical strength," I answered warmly; "his inferior in brute force and plodding power of endurance; his inferior too in consecutive far-planning and carrying out of plans; her brain is too quick, too subtle, too fine, to hold much of the useful quality of that dogged and determined patience which distinguishes so many of our greatest inventors and explorers. But, Honoria, she is (if she is true to herself) infinitely his superior in delicate tact, sweet sympathy, grand unselfishness and divinely-awful purity. I say divinely-awful, because if she be indeed 'chaste as ice and pure as snow,' though she may not escape the calumny of the wicked, she commands and retains the passionate reverence of men who know the worst side of the world well enough to appreciate such angelic and queenly qualities. Compared with man, woman is therefore his inferior and superior both in one-a complex and beautiful problem, a delicious riddle which the best men never wish to have completely guessed; they prefer to leave something behind the veil-something mysterious and forever sanctified, and shut out from the vulgar gaze of the curious crowd!"

Thus far I had proceeded in eloquence when Honoria interrupted me.

"That sounds all very nice and pretty," she said, "but to speak bluntly, it won't wash! Don't talk of your sex, my dear boy, as though they were all romantic knights-errant of the olden time, because they're not! They're nasty fellows, most of them, and if women are nasty too, why, then they help to make them so! Look at them! Talk of smoke, why they're always smoking -dirty pipes, too, full of beastly tobacco-cheap tobacco; and as for their admiration of all those womanly qualities you describe, they don't care a bit for them! They'll run after a ballet-dancer much more readily than they'll say a civil word to a lady, and they'll crowd round a woman whose name has been bandied about in a horrid divorce case, and neglect the good girl who has never made herself notorious."

"Not always," I interposed quickly. "You've got an example in your own sister, and she is to marry the Earl of Richmoor."

"True enough," and my wife rose from her chair, shook her skirts, and flung away the last fragment of her cigarette. "But he's an exception-a very rare exception-to the rule. And all the same, Willie, I can't change myself any more than the leopard can change his spots, as the Bible says. I'm a result of the age we live in, and you don't quite like me!"

"I do like you, Honoria--" I began earnestly.

"No, you don't-not quite!" she insisted, her eyes