Within a week from that memorable Christmas day on which Irene came back from Ivy Cliff, Mrs. Talbot, who had taken a fancy to the spirited, independent, undisciplined wife of Emerson, called in to see her new friend. Irene received her cordially. She was, in fact, of all her acquaintances, the one she most desired to meet. "I'm right glad you thought of making me a call," said Mrs. Emerson, as they sat down together. "I've felt as dull all the morning as an anchorite." "You dull!" Mrs. Talbot affected surprise, as she glanced round the tasteful room in which they were sitting. "What is there to cloud your mind? With such a home and such a husband as you possess life ought to be one long, bright holiday." "Good things in their way," replied Mrs. Emerson. "But not everything." She said this in a kind of thoughtless deference to Mrs. Talbot's known views on the subject of homes and husbands, which she had not hesitated to call women's prisons and women's jailers. "Indeed! And have you made that discovery?" Mrs. Talbot laughed a low, gurgling sort of laugh, leaning, at the same time, in a confidential kind of way, closer to Mrs. Emerson. "Discovery!" "Yes." "It is no discovery," said Mrs. Emerson. "The fact is self-evident. There is much that a woman needs for happiness beside a home and a husband." "Right, my young friend, right!" Mrs. Talbot's manner grew earnest. "No truer words were ever spoken. Yes--yes--a woman needs a great deal more than these to fill the measure of her happiness; and it is through the attempt to restrict and limit her to such poor substitutes for a world-wide range and freedom that she has been so dwarfed in mental stature, and made the unhappy creature and slave of man's hard ambition and indomitable love of power. There were Amazons of old--as the early Greeks knew to their cost--strong, self-reliant, courageous women, who acknowledged no human superiority. Is the Amazonian spirit dead in the earth? Not so! It is alive, and clothing itself with will, power and persistence. Already it is grasping the rein, and the mettled steed stands impatient to feel the rider's impulse in the saddle. The cycle of woman's degradation and humiliation is completed. A new era in the world's social history has dawned for her, and the mountain-tops are golden with the coming day."