learly despised, had
pronounced some such criticism, or suggested it by her own attitude.
But she knew that Ralph would never admit that he had been influenced by
anybody.

"You don't read enough, Mary," he was saying. "You ought to read more
poetry."

It was true that Mary's reading had been rather limited to such works
as she needed to know for the sake of examinations; and her time for
reading in London was very little. For some reason, no one likes to be
told that they do not read enough poetry, but her resentment was only
visible in the way she changed the position of her hands, and in the
fixed look in her eyes. And then she thought to herself, "I'm behaving
exactly as I said I wouldn't behave," whereupon she relaxed all her
muscles and said, in her reasonable way:

"Tell me what I ought to read, then."

Ralph had unconsciously been irritated by Mary, and he now delivered
himself of a few names of great poets which were the text for a
discourse upon the imperfection of Mary's character and way of life.

"You live with your inferiors," he said, warming unreasonably, as he
knew, to his text. "And you get into a groove because, on the whole,
it's rather a pleasant groove. And you tend to forget what you're there
for. You've the feminine habit of making much of details. You don't see
when things matter and when they don't. And that's what's the ruin of
all these organizations. That's why the Suffragists have never done
anything all these years. What's the point of drawing-room meetings and
bazaars? You want to have ideas, Mary; get hold of something big; never
mind making mistakes, but don't niggle. Why don't you throw it all up
for a year, and travel?--see something of the world. Don't be content
to live with half a dozen people in a backwater all your life. But you
won't," he concluded.

"I've rather come to that way of thinking myself--about myself, I mean,"
said Mary, surprising him by her acquiescence. "I should like to go
somewhere far away."

For a moment they were both silent. Ralph then said:

"But look here, Mary, you haven't been taking this seriously, have you?"
His irritation was spent, and the depression, which she could not keep
out of her voice, made him feel suddenly with remorse that he had been
hurting her.

"You won't go away, will you?" he asked. And as she said nothing, he
added, "Oh no, don't go away."

"I don't know exactly what I mean to do," she replied. She hovered
on the verge