ossed her face, as she repeated--

'_They_ are sexless, you think?'

'We find them so,' said the other, firmly.

'Why'--Miss Levering smiled outright--'that's what they say of you.'

'Well, it's nonsense, like the rest of what they say.'

The accusation of sexlessness brought against the curled darlings of
society by these hard-working, hard-hitting sisters of theirs was not
the least ironic thing in the situation.

'Why do you call them----?'

'Because we see they have no sex-pride. If they had, they couldn't do
the things they do.'

'What sort of things?'

'Oh, I can't go into that.' She stood up and tugged at her wrinkled
cotton gloves. 'But it's easy for us to see they're sexless.' She seemed
to resent the unbelief in the opposite face. 'Lady Caterham sent for me
the other day. You may have heard of Lady Caterham.'

Miss Levering suppressed the fact of how much, by a vague-sounding--

'Y--yes.'

'Well, she sent for me to---- Oh, I suppose she was curious!'

'Like me,' said the other, smiling.

'_She's_ a very great person in her county, and she _said_ she
sympathized with the movement--only she didn't approve of our tactics,
she said. We are pretty well used by now to people who don't approve of
our tactics, so I just sat and waited for the "dog-whip."'

It was obvious that the lady without influence in her county winced at
that, almost as though she felt the whip on her own shoulders. She was
indeed a hard-hitter, this woman.

'I don't go about talking of why I carry a whip. I _hate_ talking about
it,' she flung the words out resentfully. 'But I'd been sent to try to
get that woman to help, and so I explained. I told her when she asked
why it seemed necessary'--again the face flushed--'I told her!--more
than I've told you. And will you believe it, she never turned a hair.
Just sat there with a look of cool curiosity on her face. Oh, they have
no sex-pride, those upper-class women!'

'Lady Caterham probably didn't understand.'

'Perfectly. She asked questions. No, it just didn't matter much to her
that a woman should suffer that sort of thing. She didn't feel the
indignity of it. Perhaps if it had come to her, _she_ wouldn't have
suffered,' said the critic, with a grim contempt.

'There may be another explanation,' said Miss Levering, a little curtly,
but wisely she forbore to present it.

If the rough and ready reformer had chilled her new sympathizer by this
bitterness against 'the parasit