ask if women were prepared to go as soldiers and
Georgina would enquire how many years of service he had done or horrify
her mother by manifest allusion to the agonies and dangers of
maternity,--things like that. It gave a new interest to breakfast for
Snagsby; and the peculiarly lady-like qualities of Mrs. Sawbridge, a
gift for silent, pallid stiffness, a disposition, tactful but
unsuccessful, to "change the subject," an air of being about to leave
the room in disdain, had never shone with such baleful splendour. Our
interest here is rather with the effect of these remarkable disputes,
which echoed in Sir Isaac's private talk long after Georgina had gone
again, upon Lady Harman. He could not leave this topic of feminine
emancipation alone, once it had been set going, and though Ellen would
always preface her remarks by, "Of course Georgina goes too far," he
worried her slowly into a series of definite insurgent positions. Sir
Isaac's attacks on Georgina certainly brought out a good deal of
absurdity in her positions, and Georgina at times left Sir Isaac without
a leg to stand on, and the net result of their disputes as of most human
controversies was not conviction for the hearer but release. Her mind
escaped between them, and went exploring for itself through the great
gaps they had made in the simple obedient assumptions of her girlhood.
That question originally put in Paradise, "Why shouldn't we?" came into
her mind and stayed there. It is a question that marks a definite stage
in the departure from innocence. Things that had seemed opaque and
immutable appeared translucent and questionable. She began to read more
and more in order to learn things and get a light upon things, and less
and less to pass the time. Ideas came to her that seemed at first
strange altogether and then grotesquely justifiable and then crept to a
sort of acceptance by familiarity. And a disturbing intermittent sense
of a general responsibility increased and increased in her.

You will understand this sense of responsibility which was growing up in
Lady Harman's mind if you have felt it yourself, but if you have not
then you may find it a little difficult to understand. You see it comes,
when it comes at all, out of a phase of disillusionment. All children, I
suppose, begin by taking for granted the rightness of things in general,
the soundness of accepted standards, and many people are at least so
happy that they never really grow out of this