“Are you badly of?” the Disagreeable Man asked rather timidly.

“I have very few wants,” she answered brightly.  “And wealth is only a relative word, after all.’’

“It is a pity that you should go back to work so soon,” he said half to himself.  “You are only just better; and it is easy to lose what one has gained.”

“Oh, I am not likely to lose,” she answered; “but I shall be careful this time.  I shall do a little teaching, and perhaps a little writing:  not much—­you need not be vexed.  I shall not try to pick up the other threads yet.  I shall not be political, nor educational, nor anything else great.”

“If you call politics or education great,” he said.  “And heaven defend me from political or highly educated women!”

“You say that because you know nothing about them,” she said sharply.

“Thank you,” he replied.  “I have met them quite often enough!”

“That was probably some time ago,” she said rather heartlessly.  “If you have lived here so long, how can you judge of the changes which go on in the world outside Petershof?”

“If I have lived here so long,” he repeated, in the bitterness of his heart.

Bernardine did not notice:  she was on a subject which always excited her.

“I don’t know so much about the political women,” she said, “but I do know about the higher education people.  The writers who rail against the women of this date are really describing the women of ten years ago.  Why, the Girton girl of ten years ago seems a different creation from the Girton girl of to-day.  Yet the latter has been the steady outgrowth of the former!”

“And the difference between them?” asked the Disagreeable Man; “since you pride yourself on being so well informed.”

“The Girton girl of ten years ago,” said Bernardine, “was a, sombre, spectacled person, carelessly and dowdily dressed, who gave herself up to wisdom, and despised every one who did not know the Agamemnon by heart.  She was probably not lovable; but she deserves to be honoured and thankfully remembered.  She fought for woman’s right to be well educated, and I cannot bear to hear her slighted.  The fresh-hearted young girl who nowadays plays a good game of tennis, and takes a high place in the Classical or Mathematical Tripos, and is book learned, without being bookish, and . . .”

“What other virtues are left, I wonder?” he interrupted.

“And who does not scorn to take a pride in her looks because she happens to take a pride in her books,” continued Bernardine, looking at the Disagreeable Man, and not seeming to see him:  “she is what she is by reason of that grave and loveless woman who won the battle for her.”

Here she paused.

“But how ridiculous for me to talk to you in this way!” she said.  “It is not likely that you would be interested in the widening out of women’s lives.”

“And pray why not?” he asked.  “Have I been on the shelf too long?”