"It's all very simple," said Emmeline. "It means that we are having an awful time trying to escape from the degradation into which you have forced us. We struggle forward, and then the habits of the harem civilisation which you have imposed on us assert themselves. Do you think we women love to dress? Every time we try on a pretty gown we know that we are riveting on the chains of our own servitude."
"But why make the chains so tight?" I said.
She now turned to face me.
"The reason for the sheath-gown is quite plain," said Emmeline. "Men have always shown such a decided preference for actresses and dancing girls that we others have taken to imitating actresses and dancing girls in self-defence."
"But that isn't so at all," I said. "Look at your trained nurses in their simple white caps and aprons. They are bewitching. It is universally conceded that the most dangerous thing in the world is for an unmarried man to be operated on for appendicitis. That was the way, you'll recall, Adam obtained his wife—after a surgical operation. The case of the hospital nurse alone disposes of your entire argument about our predilection for dancing girls."
"That I do not admit," said Emmeline. "It is true that a man finds himself longing for what is simple and wholesome whenever there is something the matter with him."
"When I spoke of the immodesty of present-day fashions," I said, adroitly turning the subject, "I am afraid I gave you the wrong impression. It isn't the viciousness of the thing that I object to, it's the stupid, sheeplike spirit of imitation behind it. If the passion for tight gowns indicated a kind of spiritual development, I shouldn't mind it even if it was development in the wrong direction. There might be an erring soul in the hobble, but still a soul. If the young girl of good family who strives to look like a lady of the chorus did so out of sheer perversity, there would be some comfort. One must think and feel to be perverse. What appals me is the dreadful, unquestioning innocence with which the thing is done. If we males are indeed responsible for what you are, then we have a real burden on our souls. We have done more than degrade you; we have made automata out of you. The little girl behind the soda counter who paints her face and hangs jet spangles from her ears will just as readily comply with fashion by putting on a military cape and boots, or a pony coat, or calico and a sunbonnet, or an admiral's uniform, or a yashmak."
"A what?" said Emmeline, frowning slightly.
"A yashmak," I replied, meeting her gaze steadily. "I use the word with confidence because I have just looked it up in the dictionary. At first I confused it with sanjak, which, on examination, turns out to be a district in the Balkan Peninsula bounded on the east by Servia and on the north by Bosnia-Herzegovina. A yashmak is the long veil worn by Moslem women to conceal the face and the outlines of the upper part of the body."
"You seem to have prepared pretty thoroughly for this discussion," said Emmeline.