“I’m sure that’s the last thing Mr. Harding would do,” he said.

She shot a glance at him out of her discontented dark eyes.

“Are you?” she said.

And sarcasm crept in the words.  She gave to Malling at this moment the impression of a woman so strung up as to be not her natural self, so tormented by some feeling, perhaps long repressed, that her temperament was almost furiously seeking an outlet, knowing instinctively, perhaps, that only there lay its salvation.

“His record proves it,” said Malling, with serenely smiling assurance.

Lady Sophia twisted her lips.  The Academy tea was very strong.  Perhaps it had been standing.  She drank a little, pulled at her long gloves restlessly, and looked at Malling.  He knew she was longing to confide in somebody.  If only he could induce her to confide in him!

“Oh, my husband’s been a very active man,” she said.  “Everybody knows that.  But in this modern world of ours one must not walk, or even run along, one must keep on rushing along if one intends to reach the goal.”

“And by that you mean—?”

“Mean!  The topmost height of your profession, or business, of whatever career you are in.”

“You are ambitious,” he said.

“Not for myself,” she answered quickly.  “I have no ambition for myself.”

“But perhaps the ambition to spur on another successfully?  That seems to me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship in their hearts.”

Suddenly tears started into her eyes.  She was sitting opposite Malling, the tea-table between them.  Now she leaned forward across it.  By nature she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-conscious, woman.  She was not self-conscious now.

“It is much better to be selfish,” she said earnestly.  “That is where we women make such a fatal mistake.  Instead of trusting to ourselves, of relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition.  And then, when all founders, we realize too late what I dare say every man knows.”

“What is that?”

“That we women are fools—­fools!”

“For being unselfish?”

“For thinking we have power when we are impotent.”

She made a gesture that was surely one of despair.

“No one—­at any rate, no woman—­has power for another,” she added, with almost terrible conviction.  “That is all a legend, made up to please us, I suppose.  We draw a sword against darkness and think we are fighting.  Isn’t it too absurd?”

With the last words she changed her tone, trying to make it light, and she smiled.

“We take everything too seriously.  That’s the trouble!” she said.  “And men pretend we take nothing seriously.”

“Very often they don’t understand.”

“Oh, please say never!” she exclaimed.  “They never understand.”