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 "You don't say so!" cried Ben, bursting into a hearty laugh. "Isn't your aunt, Mrs. Farnham, the president of a club?"

"Yes, and she is a very brilliant woman."

"Enlighten me further."

"I deny your heaven-born male kingship. The lord of creation is after all a very inferior animal—nearer the brute creation, weaker in infancy, shorter lived, more imperfectly developed, given to fighting, and addicted to idiocy. I never saw a female idiot in my life—did you?"

"Come to think of it, I never did," acknowledged Ben with comic gravity. "What else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"It's nothing. I agree with everything you say, but it is irrelevant. I'm studying law, you know."

"I have a personality of my own. You and your kind assume the right to absorb all lesser lights."

"Certainly; I'm a man."

"I don't care to be absorbed by a mere man."

"Don't wish to be protected, sheltered, and cared for?"

"I dream of a life that shall be larger than the four walls of a home. I have never gone into hysterics over the idea of becoming a cook and housekeeper without wages, and snuffing my life out while another grows, expands, and claims the lordship of the world. I can sing. My voice is to me what eloquence is to man. My ideal is an intellectual companion who will inspire and lead me to develop all that I feel within to its highest reach."

She paused a moment and looked defiantly into Ben's brown eyes, about which a smile was constantly playing.