“Do you not approve of educated women then?” Miss Quincey was quite shaken by this cataclysmal outbreak, this overturning and shattering of the old beacons and landmarks.

He stared into the distance.

“Oh yes, I approve of them when they are really educated—­not when they are like that.  You won’t get the flower of womanhood out of a forcing-house like St. Sidwell’s; though I daresay it produces pumpkins to perfection.”

What did he say to Miss Vivian then?  Miss Quincey could not think badly of a system that could produce women like Miss Vivian.

A cloud came over his angry eyes as they stared into the distance.

“That’s it.  It hasn’t produced them.  They have produced it.”

Miss Quincey smiled.  Evidently consistency was not to be expected of this young man.  He was so young, and so irresponsible and passionate.  She admired him for it; and not only for that; she admired him—­she could not say exactly why, but she thought it was because he had such a beautiful, bumpy, intellectual forehead.  And as she sat beside him and shook to that vibrating passion of his, she felt as if the blue moon had risen again and was shining through the trees of the park; and she was happy, absolutely, indubitably happy and safe; for she felt that he was her friend and her protector and the defender of her cause.  It was for her that he raged and maddened and behaved himself altogether so unreasonably.

Now as it happened, Cautley did champion certain theories which Miss Cursiter, when she met them, denounced as physiologist’s fads.  But it was not they, nor yet Miss Quincey, that accounted for his display of feeling.  He was angry because he wanted to come to a certain understanding with the Classical Mistress; to come to it at once; and the system kept him waiting.  It was robbing him of Rhoda, and Rhoda of her youth.  Meanwhile Rhoda was superbly happy at St. Sidwell’s, playing at being Pallas Athene; as for checking her midway in her brilliant career, that was not to be thought of for an instant.

The flower of womanhood—­it was the flower of life.  He had never seen a woman so invincibly and superlatively alive.  Cautley deified life; and in his creed, which was simplicity itself, life and health were one; health the sole source of strength, intelligence and beauty, of all divine and perfect possibilities.  At least that was how he began.  But three years’ practice in London had somewhat strained the faith of the young devotee.  He soon found himself in the painful position of a priest who no longer believes in his deity; overheard himself asking whether health was not an unattainable ideal; then declaring that life itself was all a matter of compromise; finally coming to the conclusion that the soul of things was Neurosis.