Cicily beamed approval on the speaker; but she inverted the other's phrase:
"Yes," she agreed, "our great work—the subjugation of man!"
The statement was not, however, allowed to go unchallenged. Helen Johnson, who was well along in the twenties at least, and still a spinster, prided herself on her powers of conquest, despite the fact that she had no husband to show for it. So, now, she spoke with an air of languid superiority:
"Oh, we've already accomplished the subjugation of man," she drawled, and smiled complacently.
"Some of us have," Cicily retorted; and the accent on the first word pointed the allusion.
"Oh, hush, dear!" The chiding whisper came from Mrs. Delancy, a gray-haired woman of sixty-five, somewhat inclined to stoutness and having a handsome, kindly face. She was the aunt of Cicily, and had reared the motherless girl in her New York home. Now, on a visit to her niece, the bride of a year, she found herself inevitably involved in the somewhat turbulent session of the Civitas Club, with which as yet she enjoyed no great amount of sympathy. Her position in the chair nearest the presiding officer gave her opportunity to voice the rebuke without being overheard by anyone save the militant Mrs. Flynn, who smiled covertly.
Cicily bent forward, and spoke softly to her aunt's ear:
"I just had to say it, auntie," she avowed happily. "You know, she tried her hardest to catch Charles."
Mrs. Morton, a middle-aged society woman, who displayed sporadic interest in the cause of woman during the dull season, now rose from the chair immediately behind Mrs. Flynn, and spoke with a tone of great decisiveness: