Praed [shakes his head energetically] !!!

Vivie.  Well, anyhow, she did; and nothing would please my mother but that I should do the same thing.  I said flatly that it was not worth my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I offered to try for fourth wrangler or thereabouts for fifty pounds.  She closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than my bargain.  But I wouldn’t do it again for that.  Two hundred pounds would have been nearer the mark.

Praed [much damped] Lord bless me!  Thats a very practical way of looking at it.

Vivie.  Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?

Praed. But surely it’s practical to consider not only the work these honors cost, but also the culture they bring.

Vivie.  Culture!  My dear Mr Praed:  do you know what the mathematical tripos means?  It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics.

I’m supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except the mathematics it involves.  I can make calculations for engineers, electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to nothing about engineering or electricity or insurance.  I don’t even know arithmetic well.  Outside mathematics, lawn-tennis, eating, sleeping, cycling, and walking, I’m a more ignorant barbarian than any woman could possibly be who hadn’t gone in for the tripos.

Praed [revolted] What a monstrous, wicked, rascally system!  I knew it!  I felt at once that it meant destroying all that makes womanhood beautiful!

Vivie.  I don’t object to it on that score in the least.  I shall turn it to very good account, I assure you.

Praed. Pooh!  In what way?

Vivie.  I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing.  Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time.  I’ve come down here by myself to read law:  not for a holiday, as my mother imagines.  I hate holidays.

Praed. You make my blood run cold.  Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?

Vivie.  I don’t care for either, I assure you.

Praed. You can’t mean that.

Vivie.  Oh yes I do.  I like working and getting paid for it.  When I’m tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it.

Praed [rising in a frenzy of repudiation] I don’t believe it.  I am an artist; and I can’t believe it:  I refuse to believe it.  It’s only that you havn’t discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.

Vivie.  Yes I have.  Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria Fraser.  Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but I was really at Honoria’s chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a greenhorn could.  In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt of going out except for exercise.  And I never enjoyed myself more in my life.