"Poor, poor woman!" I cried, as we rode on, feeling for
some occult reason very angry with the Man of Wrath.
"And her wretched husband doesn't care a rap, and will
probably beat her to-night if his supper isn't right.
What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes
when the women have the babies! "

"Quite so, my dear," replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly.
"You have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing this
agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious
competition with man. How can a person who is constantly losing a year
of the best part of her life compete with a young man who never loses any time
at all? He has the brute force, and his last word on any subject could always
be his fist."

I said nothing. It was a dull, gray afternoon in the beginning
of November, and the leaves dropped slowly and silently at our horses'
feet as we rode towards the Hirschwald.

"It is a universal custom," proceeded the Man of Wrath,
"amongst these Russians, and I believe amongst the lower classes
everywhere, and certainly commendable on the score of simplicity,
to silence a woman's objections and aspirations by knocking her down.
I have heard it said that this apparently brutal action has anything
but the maddening effect tenderly nurtured persons might suppose,
and that the patient is soothed and satisfied with a rapidity
and completeness unattainable by other and more polite methods.
Do you suppose," he went on, flicking a twig off a tree with his whip
as we passed, "that the intellectual husband, wrestling intellectually
with the chaotic yearnings of his intellectual wife, ever achieves