CHAPTER XIII.

I did not remain unconscious long. When I revived, I was lying on some wraps which were spread upon the ground near where I had stood, and gentle hands were bathing my forehead. I opened my eyes, and saw that two women were kneeling over me with solicitous faces, while a third, a commanding brunette, stood a little way off watching us. The rest of the procession were returning across the bridge toward the women’s home.

The first thought that came into my mind as I opened my eyes and saw the gentle faces hovering over me, was that henceforth I should love all women, that as a sex they were forever entitled to the deep and admiring admiration and affection of all men. Until a new and more humane social order should be safely established, I would patiently bide my time without license or anarchy, but no power on earth should prevent me from loyally regarding every woman as my sister from that time forth. I murmured confused thanks for their kindness, and arose in deep embarrassment.

“Are you well enough to go to your home?” said the young woman who had been watching us. Her manner was that of sincere solicitude, unmixed with either embarrassment or affectation.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, and turned briskly on my heel; but I had gone but a few steps when my feet began to falter; my knees were strangely weak.

“I think you had better see him safely home,” said the brunette to the two women under whose ministrations I had revived. Weak as I was I could not refuse, and the two women, gently taking each an arm, began to slowly walk with me toward Mr. Lister’s house.

Many times during the past few days, as the reader knows, it had seemed to me that I must be dreaming, such was the astounding strangeness of my surroundings. Let him then imagine what a wildly preposterous vision it must have seemed to me, Rodney Carford, to be escorted by two women toward a home in a town in which woman had utterly forsaken man. To be thus escorted, too, on the eve of the casting of a ballot which was to decide the perpetuity of the human race!

To add to the overpowering strangeness of my situation, I suddenly realized that the two women who were accompanying me toward Mr. Lister’s home belonged to the two most injured classes in the women’s panorama. One was an old maid, and the other had been a courtesan. This discovery revived in my mind the deep remorse which I had felt in beholding their pathetic pageant. I remember weakly trying to decide in my mind which of the two had been most cruelly injured by man. I longed to throw my arms around them both, but I scarcely dared to look into their faces as we walked slowly along. At last, as I stood at the door of Mr. Lister’s house, I raised my eyes to theirs. “Forgive me,” I said to the old maid. “Forgive me,” I said to the courtesan. They made no reply, but a serene light, unmixed with any bitterness, shone in their eyes and gave me comfort. As they turned away after leaving me at the door of Mr. Lister’s house, I followed them wistfully with my eyes. They had wound their arms about each other like sisters, and without a single backward glance, were walking toward the bridge.

I have no recollection how I passed the night that ensued, but I suppose I must have slept. I remember that Mr. Lister had retired when I entered the house, and as I felt no inclination for conversation, it was a relief to me to seek the solitude of my room.

The day on which the ballots were to be cast dawned as all other days of great import to the human days have dawned. Although it was a day that was to decide a question never before conceived of, and one that involved the possible extinction of the human race, it was not marked by any demonstration of any kind. On the contrary, the conspicuous thing about the day, making it totally unlike any previous balloting in the world’s history, was the noiselessness with which everything was conducted. There were no harangues upon the street corners, no attempt at persuasion anywhere, not even any inquiry among men as to how individuals were going to vote. Each man seemed wholly wrapped in his own thoughts, but there was a stern directness of manner, a total absence of any appearance of vacillation, that showed that the time for the decision was ripe.

The system of voting was the Australian, and how each man was to vote was a secret known only to his own soul. After spending some time with Mr. Lister in visiting the polling-places, I returned to the house to pass the day as best I could in his library.

At noon Mr. Lister returned with an interesting piece of news. The polls were to close at four o’clock, and at that hour the women were to assemble in the great Auditorium which formed one of the group of buildings which they occupied. There they were to await the report of the decision of the ballots, and any one was free to go there to hear it. To pass the time till then I reminded Mr. Lister of his promise to give me “Zugassent’s Discovery.” He placed the book in my hands, and, having arranged with me to meet him at the Woman’s Auditorium at four o’clock, he left the house to attend to business pertaining to the balloting.

It was with a feeling of rare curiosity, not unmixed with profound awe, that I opened a book which promised to have made a discovery of value in a field in which no other discoverer had ever had the temerity to set foot. That this discovery was as innocent of evil as the white light of day, and profoundly scientific as well, that it was in keeping with the noble advancement of man in all other departments of wisdom, I was assured both from what I had been told of the character of Zugassent, and because it commended itself to such pure-minded lovers as Justin Lister and Allegra Alliston. But I had not the slightest idea of what this discovery might be. I accordingly plunged into the book as one plunges on a summer’s day in a stream of whose depth he has no conception.

As I got deeper and deeper into “Zugassent’s Discovery,” my interest became absorbingly, wonderfully, and overpoweringly intense. I forgot all about the Great Woman’s Strike. I forgot where I was. I forgot everything which had happened in the exciting days through which I had just passed. Hour after hour flew by, and as I turned page after page there was gradually unfolded to my wondering perceptions a discovery that appeared to be the perfection of chivalry, the essence of unselfishness, the culminating and consummate flower of the true refinement of all ages. Civilizing and ennobling man beyond all precedent, it seemed to lift the primeval curse from woman not less really than if it had been done by an Omnipotent fiat. With breathless interest I read on. Once only I paused, as the question rose in my mind, “Was it feasible?” At that critical moment a clock struck, and I counted the strokes. Five o’clock! Like a flash the recollection of everything came back to me. It was an hour after the time at which I had promised to meet Mr. Lister at the Woman’s Auditorium! Thrusting “Zugassent’s Discovery” into my pocket, I seized my hat, and leaving the house, hurried toward the bridge which led to the women’s home.

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