V.
Mercedes, remember, lived in the earlier half of this strange century, now so soon to go to judgment. In these last years, when women seek men's rights in exchange for woman's reason, reactionary males have criticised them as children swapping old lamps for new, fine instruments for coarser toys. As a poet has put it, why does
"a woman
Dowered by God with power of life or death
Now cry for coarser tools,"
and seek to exchange the ballot for Prospero's wand? Like other savages, she would exchange fine gold for guns and hatchets. (Beads, trinkets, the men might pardon them!)
A woman of power once said she had rather reign than govern. But reigns, with male St. Clairs, so soon are over! Mercedes' dynasty had ended. She knew it before St. Clair was conscious of it, and poor Jamie knew it when she did.
It was his custom to stay late at the bank, after hours. It closed at two o'clock; and in
