!'

'Some people are so foolish as to think we are working against the men.'

'So you are!'

'It's just what the old-school politicians would like you to think. But
it's nonsense. Nobody knows better than we that the best interests of
men and women are identical--they _can't be separated_. It's trying to
separate them that's made the whole trouble.'

'Oh, you know it all!'

'Well, you see'--she put on her most friendly and reasonable air--'men
have never been obliged to study women's point of view. But we've been
obliged to study the men's point of view. It's natural we should
understand you a great deal better than you understand us. And though
you sometimes disappoint us, we don't lose hope of you.'

'Thanks awfully.'

'We think that if we can only make you understand the meaning of this
agitation, then you'll help us to get what we want. We believe the day
will come when the old ideal of men standing by the women--when that
ideal will be realized. For don't believe it ever _has_ been realized.
It never has! Now our last speaker for to-day will say a few words to
you. Mrs. Thomas.'

'Haven't you had about enough?' said Borrodaile, impatiently.

'Don't wait for me,' was all her answer.

'Shall you stay, then, till the bitter end?'

'It will only be a few moments now. I may as well see it out.'

He glanced at his watch, detached it, and held it across the back of the
seat.

She nodded, and repeated, 'Don't wait.'

His answer to that was to turn not only a bored but a slightly injured
face towards the woman who had, not without difficulty, balanced her
rotund form on the bench at the far end. She might have been the
comfortable wife of a rural grocer. She spoke the good English you may
not infrequently hear among that class, but it became clear, as she went
on, that she was a person of a wider cultivation.

'You'd better go. She'll be stodgy and dull.' Vida spoke with a real
sympathy for her friend's sufferings. 'Oh, portentous dull.'

'And no waist!' sighed Borrodaile, but he sank back in his corner.

Presently his wandering eye discovered something in his companion's
aspect that told him subtly she was not listening to the mauve matron.
Neither were some of the others. A number had moved away, and the little
lane their going left was not yet closed, for the whole general
attention was obviously slackened. This woman wasn't interesting enough
even to boo at. The people who didn't go home began to ta