An enthusiastic soprano was at the moment striking certain high notes as though she had a grudge against them, and Fenton was obliged to pause a moment before he asked,—
“Won’t you explain that to me, Miss Van Vleck? It is, as you put it, a novel idea.”
“Why, don’t you see,” she said earnestly, “the very fact that women are joined together in a protest against ancient customs and prejudices has drawn them closer to each other; while, at the same time, it has tended to bring out the most characteristic qualities of each individual woman. In a word, we women interest each other more as rebels than we did as slaves.”
Again the soprano uttered her protest against peace and quiet, and Fenton had an opportunity to weigh Gertrude Van Vleck’s words. His vis-à-vis was a social product the like of which had not existed in the days when he had been a member of New York’s inner circle, and had expected from a young unmarried woman nothing in a conversational way that would challenge thought. Of course, in his journalistic occupation he had been obliged to follow in detail the progress of woman toward a broader, perhaps higher, plane of endeavor; but this was the first time that Fenton had come face to face with the new ideas incarnate. He was entertained, stimulated, inspired, by the experience. At first he had looked upon Gertrude Van Vleck simply as a finely developed specimen of the patrician type, whose dark hair, deep blue eyes, and finely rounded neck formed a combination very pleasing to the eye, and indicated a remote Spanish strain mingling with her Dutch blood. But after a few moments in her companionship, he had discovered that she not only satisfied his æsthetic nature, but piqued his intellectual make-up. She had given him the highest pleasure that one mind can bestow upon another, by opening up new vistas of thought to him.
John Fenton had reached that period of a life that had been filled with disappointments when feminine sympathy and appreciation are among the few things left in the world that are wholly satisfying. Perhaps it was this very fact that had led him to make a friend of Richard Stoughton, a youth whose quick intuitions and mental alertness had much in them that was feminine.
There was, furthermore, a note of defiance in Gertrude’s last remark that struck a sympathetic chord in Fenton’s nature. No man can accept the premises upon which the economic theories to which Fenton had subscribed are based without developing the rebellious tendencies that lie more or less dormant in all men. For the first time, the similarity impressed him that exists between woman’s revolt against the oppression of man, and man’s restlessness under the threatening inequalities of wealth.
“And as rebels women are much more attractive to men than they were as conformists,” remarked Fenton, seizing an opportunity to resume the conversation, after a self-satisfied tenor had proved to his own satisfaction that he had a divine right to be conceited about his voice. “To use a rather shop-worn quotation, ‘Blessings brighten as they take their flight.’”
“But that is not a fair illustration,” exclaimed Gertrude earnestly. “We are not trying to fly away from men, but to fly with them.”
“That may be true,” said Fenton, smiling thoughtfully; “but men are naturally startled at the suddenly displayed power of your wings, and are a little shy at first.”
“Why should they be? After all, I believe that the underlying ambition of the new woman—as she is rather vulgarly called—is to make herself intellectually attractive to the brightest men.”