Another little stir, this time masculine. Mr. Lord hawed rather loudly, settling himself more firmly between June and Miss Hubbard, and as the haw was understood to be the preface to a speech, everyone kept silent.
“And when you speak of full experience, I presume you are thinking of a single standard for men and women—”
“Yes, yes! That women should be allowed the freedom from condemnation that man enjoys, since in having freedom, it is generally understood that they will exercise it with the moderation natural to their sensibilities.”
“But isn’t that presupposing”—June unconsciously fell into the didactic tone of the others. “But isn’t that presupposing that the mental and spiritual can only be reached through the physical?”
“Or do you mean Platonic trial marriages?” Regina contributed.
“You have to take into consideration the nature of the man and woman involved,” Miss Hubbard said gently, as from a height.
“Then too,” Miss Smythe reminded them, “one must remember the emotional wave line of women which stands in contradistinction to the steady even flow of that of man. After all, one cannot ignore the physiological basis of existence. According to recent tests made by Dr. Peraugh,” then remembering that the explanation of the tests was couched in language perhaps not fit for the ears of undergraduates and mixed company, she paused.
“You mean those published in Eros?” Mr. Fenton helped her out.
“Quite so,” Miss Hubbard agreed. “And do you remember those in an earlier issue which proved that woman’s brain is fully equal to a man’s and quite as capable of grappling with problems of state. There can be no doubt therefore that Pompadour and du Barry swayed the rulers of France, not through physical charm, but through their mental and spiritual qualities.”
“But I can’t see that their physical qualities weren’t the basis,” June protested. “If du Barry hadn’t been beautiful she would have always been a milliner’s apprentice. As it was, she attracted men, and they were the ones who educated her till she passed out of their hands and became Louis XV’s mistress.”
“You are getting down to specific cases, my dear,” Miss Hubbard reminded her, but before she could raise the conversation to generalities again, Regina had pitched in.
“I liked du Barry,” she assured them. “She was so beautifully frank. When she discovered in her footman an old lover of hers, she honestly confessed in her memoirs to falling a victim to his charms and being faithless to the king and didn’t try to excuse herself. All she did was to admit she was a flighty creature and dismiss him from her service for fear she’d fall again.”
“You must remember that French literature,” said Mr. Lord, succeeding where Miss Hubbard had failed, “is not restricted in the sense that English literature is. This freedom is apt to lead us to lay undue emphasis on that frankness and our reticence.”
“But then there is always the implication,” Miss Smythe hastened to say, “of character in our sublimest moments. You must remember those lines of Henley—
“ ‘Some starlit garden grey with dew
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire
What matters so that I and you
Are worthy of our desire.’ ”
“Ah! ‘Worthy’! That is the point,” said Miss Hubbard softly. “And those other lines—
“Some moment that will magnify the universal soul,
And quicken and control.”
The usual pause that separates a quotation from the rest of the conversation fell and the guests began to deposit their empty cups and saucers on the center table and to brush the crumbs from their knees. And in the pause Regina jumped up.
“Lordy, an editorial conference at five, and we’re late,” she reminded June.
“You must come again,” Mr. Fenton assured them.
“Yes, it has been very interesting,” was all the girls could say and as they went out they could hear Miss Hubbard italicizing—“ ‘Youth shows but half. See all. Be not afraid,’ ” and Mr. Lord’s “Quite so!”
“Do you suppose they hang over their teacups and worry about sex every afternoon?” June asked Regina as they were getting into bed that night to read history for an hour before going to sleep.
“I wonder why they don’t live a full life as Miss Hubbard called it. Then they wouldn’t spend so much time gabbling about it.”
“I don’t believe for one minute that she’s living with anybody, Regina. You know the rumors that go around the campus. This is the way it looks to me. Mr. Lord, probably, is urging her to take the fatal step and she feels she is in danger of doing it. That gives her a feeling of superiority over the other old maid instructors and she speaks with authority. But if she had taken it, she wouldn’t talk so much about it, or if she did talk, what she’d say would have made more sense.
“Do you know, I’d like to write a theme for Mr. Lord only it would get me in a mess—”
“What sort of theme? Your brain is entirely too active, June.” Regina settled back, glad to postpone the history reading for a time.
“On those things they were talking about this afternoon.” June pondered deeply. “Well in the first place, you know by all sorts of ways whether you like a man physically or not. You can tell without living with him first, I should think. And you can tell whether a man keeps himself clean and what sort of table manners he has, so you get an idea of what breakfast with him would be like in the morning. That’s the physical side of it.
“On the other side, the mental and spiritual, all the men we know and talk to try to impress us with their mentality and they put their best mental clothes on for us just as a male bird displays all its beauty of coloring for the sake of the female. Not that they want to marry us. They just want our admiration, the same as we like theirs.”
“That disposes of trial marriages, in a superficial way,” Regina agreed.
“Unless a trial marriage lasted for several
