on Anthropology, Chemistry—­Chemistry ought to appeal, even to City men because it made such a lot of money—­Ethnology, Hygiene, Geography, Economic Botany, Regional Zoology, Germ Diseases, Agriculture, etc., etc.; and the absolute necessity of giving Woman the same electoral privileges as Man.  He was always well inclined that way, but after he realized that David was Vivie he became almost an embittered Suffragist.

The Speaker took care that he had little scope for his Anthropology, Economic Botany, Chemistry, Hygiene, etc., on Votes of Supply:  but he got in some nasty blows in the Woman’s cause, and in fact was so strangely rancorous that Ministers looked at him evilly and arranged that he was not placed on the committee of the Conciliation Bill; that amusing farce with which the Liberal Ministry sought in 1910 to stave off the Suffrage dilemma.

Rossiter and Vivie seldom met except at public receptions.  Every now and again he came to Suffrage meetings when she was going to speak; and how well she spoke then!  How real it all seemed to her!  How handsome she looked (even at 36) and how near she was to tears and a breakdown; while his eyes burned; and when he got home poor little Linda was in despair over her poor distraught Michael, who could find no happiness or contentment in Ten Thousand a year, great fame as the chief inventor of the Ductless Glands, and the man who had issued a taxonomic classification of the Bovidae which even satisfied me.

What a cruel force is Love!  Or is the cruelty in human disciplinary laws?  Here were two persons eminently suited to be mates, calculated while still in the prime of life to procreate offspring that would be a credit to the nation, who asked for nothing more in life than to lie in each other’s arms—­after which no doubt they would have arisen and performed the most wonderful feats in inductive science or in embroidery or mathematics.  And they were inwardly raging, losing their appetites, sleeping very badly yet eschewing drugs, pursuing will-of-the-wisps in politics, wasting the best years of their lives ... from a sense of duty, that sense of duty which has made the Nordic White man the dominant race on the earth.  “We suffer individually but we gain collectively,” Rossiter said to himself.

In May, 1910, King Edward died, and all these gladiators, male and female, willingly declared a Truce in the Suffrage battle, to obtain a much needed rest in the weary conflict.  As soon as political activities were resumed, the Conciliation Bill by the energies of the Liberal Whips was talked out (wasn’t it?).  At any rate it came to nothing for that Session.  Vivie took this as a decision.  She openly declared that the Vote never would be given by the House of Commons or House of Lords until it was wrung from the Legislature by a complete dislocation of public affairs, the nearest approach to a revolution women could bring about without rifles and cannon.