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286 tidy the room, I do the cooking, the porteress brings me provisions from the market, and that is all. Oh, how I wish some of those keenwitted gentlemen could come here and see!"

"Yes," Smilowicz put in here, "if a working woman is out of doors all day long, leaving her children uncared for, that is in order and reasonable and right! But let a woman consecrate a few hours to her studies in the evening, they will say this is emancipation, and incompatible with her duties as a mother."

I could see how gratified she was to hear this.

"I am only sorry for those who do not know what exceeding happiness is to be found in marriage, if there is but mutual understanding and sympathy." And she glanced at her husband with extreme tenderness.

Meanwhile, there was a continual noise on the other side of the partition, and there came a curiously disturbing sound of women's voices, cackling with a sort of scandalized laughter—something between giggling and sobbing.

Smilowicz's attention was drawn off by it.