"Isn't it queer, Lilly, that after all these centuries and centuries
women are just beginning to--what did that woman on the program call it
down at Cooper Union hall the other night--function in the government?
Why has it taken them so long to ask for their half in the say-so
of things?"
"Any great movement, Zoe, must have very slow beginnings. Think for what
ages man lived without Christianity!"
"Yes; but look how long it has been here."
"Reckoning in geology, Zoe, and compared with the age of mountains and
oceans, two thousand years isn't long."
"I think it is."
"You darling!"
They alighted at the Washington Arch, jamming their way into the tight
battalion of spectators already lining both sides of lower Fifth Avenue.
The head of the parade was already forming, a slim young leader holding
in her white mount with difficulty.
"Lilly, she looks like our picture of Jeanne d'Arc when she sees the
vision!"
"She is heeding a vision, Zoe--of to-morrow."
"I feel so--so thrilled, Lilly. Do you?"
"Yes," said Lilly, for some reason breathing hard. "Oh, I do!"
There was a break of music, and all about them women darting into line,
sudden banners floating out, and the white horse prancing in the
archway, for all the world as if spun at a tangent off the narrative
frieze of the arch.
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