He stared, not at the distance but at her.

"Why, surely," he said more gently, "to be women first--to be wives and
mothers."

She drew her cape a little closer round her and turned from him with
half-shut eyes. She seemed at once to be protecting herself against
his theory and blinding her sight to her own perishing and thwarted
woman-hood.

"All Nature is against it," he said.

"Nature?" she repeated feebly.

"Yes, Nature; and she'll go her own way in spite of all the systems that
ever were. Don't you know---you are a teacher, so you ought to know--that
overstrain of the higher faculties is sometimes followed by astonishing
demonstrations on the part of Nature?"

Miss Quincey replied that no cases of the kind had come under _her_
notice.

"Well--your profession ought to go hand-in-hand with mine. If you only
saw the half of what we see--But you only see the process; we get the
results. By the way I must go and look at some of them."

His words echoed madly in a feverish little brain, "Ought to
go--hand-in-hand--hand-in-hand with mine."