“Do tell me, Helena!” he urged.

“What’s the good?  You’ll only side with him—­and preach.  You’ve done that several times already.”

The young man frowned a little.

“I don’t preach!” he said shortly.  “I say what I think—­when you ask me.  Twice, if I remember right, you told me of some proceeding of yours, and asked me for my opinion.  Well, I gave it, and it didn’t happen to be yours.  But that isn’t preaching.”

“You gave so many reasons—­it was preaching.”

“Great Scott!—­wasn’t it more polite to give one’s reasons?”

“Perhaps.  But one shouldn’t burst with them.  One should be sorry to disagree.”

“Hm.  Well—­now kindly lay down for me, how I am to disagree with you about Philip.  For I do disagree with you, profoundly.”

“There it is.  Profoundly—­that shows how you enjoy disagreeing.  Why can’t you put yourself at my point of view?”

“Well, I’ll try.  But at least—­explain it to me.”

Helena threw herself into a garden chair, under a wild cherry which rose a pyramid of silver against an orange sky.  Other figures were scattered about the lawns, three or four young men, and three or four girls in light dresses.  The air seemed to be full of laughter and young voices.  Only Mrs. Friend sat shyly by herself just within the drawing-room window, a book on her knee.  A lamp behind her brought out the lines of her bent head and slight figure.

“I wonder if I like you well enough,” said Helena coolly, biting at a stalk of grass—­“well enough, I mean, to explain things.  I haven’t made you my father confessor yet, Geoffrey.”

“Suppose you begin—­and see how it answers,” said French lazily, rolling over on the grass in front of her, his chin in his hands.

“Well, I don’t mind—­for fun.  Only if you preach I shall stop.  But, first of all, let’s get some common ground.  You admit, I suppose, that the war has changed the whole position of women?”

“Yes—­with reservations.”

“Don’t state them!” said Helena hastily.  “That would be preaching.  Yes, or No?”

“Yes, then,—­you tyrant!”

“And that means—­doesn’t it—­at the very least—­that girls of my own age have done with all the old stupid chaperonage business—­at least nearly all—­that we are to choose our own friends, and make our own arrangements?—­doesn’t it?” she repeated peremptorily.

“I don’t know.  My information is—­that the mothers are stiffening.”

A laughing face looked up at her from the grass.

“Stiffening!” The tone was contemptuous.  “Well, that may be so—­for babes of seventeen—­like that one—­” her gesture indicated a slight figure in white at the edge of the lawn—­“who have never been out of the school-room—­but—­”