usion that
you are right. We are crabs in a bucket and those at the bottom are no
nobler than those on the top, for they would gladly be on the top. I'm
going on the top.'

'Sophist,' said Farwell smiling.

'I don't know what that means,' Victoria went on; 'I suppose you think
that I'm trying to cheat myself as to what is right. Possibly, but I
don't profess to know what is right.'

'Oh, no more do I,' interrupted Farwell, 'please don't set me up as a
judge. I haven't got any ethical standards for you. I don't believe
there are any; the ethics of the Renaissance are not those of the
twentieth century, nor are those of London the same as those of
Constantinople. Time and space work moral revolutions; and, even on
stereotyped lines, nobody can say present ethics are the best. From a
conventional point of view the hundred and fifty years that separate us
from Fielding mark an improvement, but I have still to learn that the
morals of to-day compare favourably with those of Sparta. You must
decide that for yourself.'

'I am doing so,' said Victoria quietly, 'but I don't think you quite
understand a woman's position and I want you to. I find a world where
the harder a woman works, the worse she is paid, where her mind is
despised and her body courted. Oh, I know, you haven't done that, but
you don't employ women. Nobody but you has ever cared a scrap about such
brains as I may have; the subs courted me in my husband's regiment. . . .'
She stopped abruptly, having spoken too freely.

'Go on,' said Farwell tactfully.

'And in London what have I found? Nothing but men bent on one pursuit.
They have followed me in the streets and tubes, tried to sit by me in
the parks. They have tried to touch me--yes me! the dependent who could
not resent it, when I served them with their food. Their talk is the
inane, under which they cloak desire. Their words are covert appeals. I
hear round me the everlasting cry: yield, yield, for that is all we want
from young women.'

'True,' said Farwell, 'I have never denied this.'

'And yet,' answered Victoria angrily, 'you almost blame me. I tell you
that I have never seen the world as I do now. Men have no use for us
save as mistresses, whether legal or not. Perhaps they will have us as
breeders or housekeepers, but the mistress is the root of it all. And if
they can gain us without pledges, without risks, by promises, by force
or by deceit, they will.'

Farwell said nothing. His eyes were