eartily sorry for them. It's worse
for them than for us; they miss the only part of university life
that has educational value. When we men were undergraduates, we
lived our whole lives, lived them all round, developing equally
every fibre of our natures. We read Plato, and Aristotle, and John
Stuart Mill, to be sure,--and I'm not quite certain we got much
good from them; but then our talk and thought were not all of
books, and of what we spelt out in them. We rowed on the river, we
played in the cricket-field, we lounged in the billiard-rooms, we
ran up to town for the day, we had wine in one another's rooms
after hall in the evening, and behaved like young fools, and threw
oranges wildly at one another's heads, and generally enjoyed
ourselves. It was all very silly and irrational, no doubt, but it
was life, it was reality; while the pretended earnestness of those
pallid Somerville girls is all an affectation of one-sided
culture."

"That's just it," Herminia answered, leaning back on the rustic
seat like David's Madame Recamier. "You put your finger on the
real blot when you said those words, developing equally every fibre
of your natures. That's what nobody yet wants us women to do.
They're trying hard enough to develop us intellectually; but
morally and socially they want to mew us up just as close as ever.
And they won't succeed. The zenana must go. Sooner or later, I'm
sure, if you begin by educating women, you must end by emancipating
them."

"So I think too," Alan answered, growing every moment more
interested. "And for my part, it's the emancipation, not the mere
education, that most appeals to me."

"Yes, I've always felt that," Herminia went on, letting herself out
more freely, for she felt she was face to face with a sympathetic
listener. "And for that reason, it's the question of social and
moral emancipation that interests me far more than the mere
political one,--woman's rights as they call it. Of course I'm a
member of all the woman's franchise leagues and everything of that
sort,--they can't afford to do without a single friend's name on
their lists at present; but the vote is a matter that troubles me
little in itself, what I want is to see women made fit to use it.
After all, political life fills but a small and unimportant part in
our total existence. It's the perpetual pressure of social and
ethical restrictions that most weighs down women."

Alan paused and looked hard at her.