to be felt for very long. It
was under rapid process of cultivation.

"Why, it is a commonplace, that if a woman _is_ bad, she is always
_very_ bad," cried Lady Engleton.

"A new and intoxicating experience," said Professor Fortescue. "I
sympathize."

"New?" his colleague murmured, with a faint chuckle.

"You distress me," said Henriette.

Professor Fortescue held that woman's "goodness" had done as much harm
in the world as men's badness. The one was merely the obverse of the
other.

"This is strange teaching!" cried Lady Engleton.

The Professor reminded her that truth was always stranger than fiction.

"To the best men," observed Valeria, "women show all their meanest
qualities. It is the fatality of their training."

Professor Theobald had noted the same trait in other subject races.

"Pray, don't call us a subject race!" remonstrated Lady Engleton.

"Ah, yes, the truth," cried Hadria, "we starve for the truth."

"You are courageous, Mrs. Temperley."

"Like the Lady of Shallott, I am sick of shadows."

"The bare truth, on this subject, is hard for a woman to face."

"It is harder, in the long run, to waltz eternally round it with averted
eyes."

"But, dear me, why is the truth about ourselves hard to face?" demanded
Valeria.

"I am placed between the horns of a dilemma: one lady clamours for the
bare truth: another forbids me to say anything unpleasing."

"I withdraw my objection," Valeria offered.

"The ungracious task shall not be forced upon unwilling chivalry," said
Hadria. "If our conditions have been evil, some scars must be left and
may as well be confessed. Among the faults of women, I should place a
tendency to trade upon and abuse real chivalry and generosity when they
meet them: a survival perhaps from the Stone Age, when the fittest to
bully were the surviving elect of society."

Hadria's eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement.

"Freedom alone teaches us to meet generosity, generously," said
Professor Fortescue; "you can't get the perpendicular virtues out of any
but the really free-born."

"Then do you describe women's virtues as horizontal?" enquired Miss Du
Prel, half resentfully.

"In so far as they follow the prevailing models. Women's love,
friendship, duty, the conduct of life as a whole, speaking very roughly,
has been lacking in the quality that I call perpendicular; a quality
implying something more than _upright_."

"You seem to value but lightly the woman's ac