od knows how many more--very ill, shall
serve hundreds of thousands well. Geoffrey Stonor shall make it harder
for his son, harder still for his grandson, to treat any woman as he
treated me.'

'How will he do that?' said the lady coldly.

'By putting an end to the helplessness of women.'

'You must think he has a great deal of power,' said her ladyship, with
some irony.

'Power? Yes,' answered the other, 'men have too much over penniless and
frightened women.'

'What nonsense! You talk as though the women hadn't their share of human
nature. _We_ aren't made of ice any more than the men.'

'No, but we have more self-control.'

'Than men?'

Vida had risen. She looked down at her friend. 'You know we have,' she
said.

'I know,' said Lady John shrewdly, 'we mustn't admit it.'

'For fear they'd call us fishes?'

Lady John had been frankly shocked at the previous plain speaking, but
she found herself stimulated to show in this moment of privacy that even
she had not travelled her sheltered way through the world altogether in
blinkers.

'They talk of our lack of self-control, but,' she admitted, 'it's the
last thing men _want_ women to have.'

'Oh, we know what they want us to have! So we make shift to have it. If
we don't, we go without hope--sometimes we go without bread.'

'Vida! Do you mean to say that you----'

'I mean to say that men's vanity won't let them see it, but the thing's
largely a question of economics.'

'You _never_ loved him, then!'

'Yes, I loved him--once. It was my helplessness that turned the best
thing life can bring into a curse for both of us.'

'I don't understand you----'

'Oh, being "understood"! that's too much to expect. I make myself no
illusions. When people come to know that I've joined the Women's
Union----'

'But you won't'

'----who is there who will resist the temptation to say "Poor Vida
Levering! What a pity she hasn't got a husband and a baby to keep her
quiet"? The few who know about me, they'll be equally sure that, not the
larger view of life I've gained, but my own poor little story, is
responsible for my new departure.' She leaned forward and looked into
Lady John's face. 'My best friend, she will be surest of all, that it's
a private sense of loss, or lower yet, a grudge, that's responsible for
my attitude. I tell you the only difference between me and thousands of
women with husbands and babies is that I am free to say what I think.
_They aren't!_'