Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/147

 is some woman, who has perhaps risen from a stenographic position, sitting in with the chiefs of the concern at the centre of the web and actually telling the 'big wigs' what to do—actually ruling the whirlwind and directing the storm."

After this speech, I glanced at Cornelia to see whether she would admit to herself her own master passion, her suppressed desire. I could see that she was doing something which she ordinarily would no more think of doing in my presence than of doing up her hair: she was reflecting.

"Possibly," she conceded.

"Not possibly," I pursued, "but certainly. All women crave mastery, beginning with the government of their own husbands; and their happiness, after the first feigning delight of amorous surrender, is to extend their jurisdiction, to enlarge the limits of their empire. It is the quality that makes queens. It is the quality that made Elizabeth and not Burleigh the ruler of England, and Catherine, not her minister,—whoever he was,—ruler of all the Russias. It is a quality which you yourself possess, my dear Cornelia, in abundance, only you haven't an adequate throne to display it on; and so, instead of sending Raleigh to South America for galleons of treasure or telling the