d was that, things
being as they are, you can't help seeing that their horrible ways are
bringing the vote a jolly sight nearer than it's ever been before.
Millions of people who never would have thought about woman suffrage are
thinking about it now. These women are advertising it as it never could
be advertised by calmly talking about it, and you can't get anything
nowadays except by shouting and smashing and abusing and advertising. I
only wish you could. No one listens to reason. It's got to be what they
call a whirlwind campaign or go without. That's not sticking up for
them. It's simply recognising a rotten state of affairs."

"And I say to you," returned Mr. Fortune, scrubbing furiously at his
fingers with a duster, "and I say to you what I seem to be perpetually
forced to say to you, that your ideas are becoming more and more
_repugnant_ to me. There's not a solitary subject comes up between us
but you adopt in it what I desire to call a stubborn and contumacious
attitude towards me. Whoof!" He blew a cyclonic blast down the speaking
tube. "Send Parker up here. Parker! Send _Parker_ up here! Parker!
_Parker! Parker!_ Pah! Pouff! Paff! Now it's all over the speaking tube!
I am by no means recovered yet, Sabre, I am very far from being yet
recovered, from your remarks yesterday on the Welsh Church
Disestablishment Bill. Let me remind you again that your attitude was
not only very painful to me in my capacity of one in Holy Orders, it was
also outrageously opposed to the traditions and standing of this firm.
We are out of sympathy, Sabre. We are seriously out of sympathy; and let
me tell you that you would do well to reflect whether we are not
dangerously out of sympathy. Let me--"

The door porter entered in the venerable presence of the summoned
Parker, much agitated.

Sabre began, "If you can't see what I said about the Disestablishment
Bill--"

"I did not see; I do not see; I cannot see and I shall not see. I--"

Sabre moved towards his door. "Well, I'd better be attending to my work.
If anything I've said annoyed you, it certainly was not intended to."

And there followed him into his room, "Pumice stone! Pumice stone!
Pumice stone! Go to the chemist's and get some pumice stone.... Very
well then, sir, don't stand there staring at me, sir!"

IV

Like living in two empty houses: empty this end; empty that end. More
frequently, for these estrangements, appealed to him the places of his
refuge: the ro