Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/75

on second thoughts—'Well, the old ones have. I like old women. They are just women then, all love and heart, and all the sort of thing a woman is supposed to be by the poets when she is young. But when a woman is young all her tenderness is crushed down by her love of love—of admiration, of power—her vanity and envy of other women.'

'O major, leave me an illusion,' some one interrupted in a broken voice. But the major turned upon him fiercely.

'Fool away, John Steward,' he said, 'but it's boys like you they suck the heart out of. You who think all these pretty ones sit at home and dust their china, and dream about birds and flowers or little innocent romances of princes and princesses, while you men are away worrying over the ruling of the universe and the power you are to your party. But you mistake. They are as great plotters as your ministers, and their rule of the few is as measured as our rule of the many. That 's why women are content to be out of the great movements of the world, because they are always busy with some deep mischief of their own—conquering souls instead of countries. Their blushes are their army, their eyes their cannon,