Only! The tone and the word struck him. Was Mrs. Harmon, then, not fully in? His mind reached forward blankly: who else could help him?
"But you must know some of our men," she suggested.
"Business acquaintances, yes," he said. "Yet they take care that I shall remain a business acquaintance merely. No, I must reach the men through the women."
"And the women?" she asked. "How will you reach them? Mrs. Fenno, for instance, knows only one kind; she is iron against innovation. How will you get on her list, or Mrs. Watson's, or Mrs. Branderson's?"
He did not answer. She saw that he was biting on the problem, and that it did not please him. She made a positive statement.
"No. It is the men you must rely on."
And he, weighing the facts, believed her, though it went against his former notions. The women—this day he had first seen them at close quarters, and had felt them to be formidable creatures. The severe majesty of Mrs. Fenno—how could he impress it? And Mrs. Branderson had, beneath the good humour of her reception of him, the skill to chat easily, and then to turn her back without excuse. He bit his mustache—the women!
She was watching him with a half-smile. "Do you not agree?"
"But which men, then?" he inquired.
"Have you no influence over a single one?"