That she was flattered and touched, that she liked him—­the kind, courteous boy—­that was certain.  Must she really assume anything else on his part—­take his advances seriously—­check them—­put up restrictions—­make herself disagreeable?  Why?  During her training in London, Lydia had drunk of the modern spring like other girls.  She had been brought up in a small old-fashioned way, by her foolish little mother, and by a father—­a stupid, honourable, affectionate man—­whom she had loved with a half-tender, half-rebellious affection.  There had been no education to speak of, for either her or Susy.  But the qualities and gifts of remoter ancestors had appeared in them—­to the bewilderment of their parents.  And when after her father’s death Lydia, at nineteen, had insisted on entering the Slade School, she had passed through some years of rapid development.  At bottom her temperament always remained, on the whole, conservative and critical; the temperament of the humourist, in whose heart the old loyalties still lie warm.  But that remarkable change in the whole position and outlook of women which has marked the last half century naturally worked upon her as upon others.  For such persons as Lydia it has added dignity and joy to a woman’s life, without the fever and disorganization which attend its extremer forms.  While Susy, attending lectures at University College, became a Suffragist, Lydia, absorbed in the pleasures and pains of her artistic training, looked upon the suffrage as a mere dusty matter of political machinery.

But the ideas of her student years—­those “ideas” which Tatham felt so much in his way—­were still dominant.  Marriage was not necessary.  Art and knowledge could very well suffice.  On the whole, in her own case, she aspired to make them suffice.

But not in any cloistered world.  Women who lived merely womanish lives, without knowledge of and comradeship with men, seemed to her limited and parochial creatures.  She was impatient of her sex, and the narrowness of her sex’s sphere.  She dreamed of a broadly human, practical, disinterested relation between men and women, based on the actual work of the world; its social, artistic, intellectual work; all that has made civilization.

“We women are starved”—­she thought, “because men will only marry us—­or make playthings of us.  But the world is only just—­these last years—­open to us, as it has been open to men for thousands of generations.  We want to taste and handle it for ourselves; as men do.  Why can’t they take us by the hand—­a few of us—­teach us, confide in us, open the treasure-house to us?—­and let us alone!  To be treated as good fellows!—­that’s all we ask.  Some of us would make such fratchy wives—­and such excellent friends!  I vow I should make a good friend!  Why shouldn’t Lord Tatham try?”