asked her about it the other day, because if mother gets worse I may be hindered about coming to the office, and I didn’t want you to get overworked,—­so I said to Beryl....  That reminds me, she referred to the coming child and added that its father was a policeman.  Quite a nice creature in his private life.  Of course she’s only kidding.  I expect it’s the architect all the time.  You know how she delighted in shocking us at Newnham.  I wish she hadn’t this kink about her.  P’raps I’m getting old-fashioned already—­You used to call me ‘the Girondist.’  But if the New Woman is to go on the loose and be unmoral like the rabbits, won’t the cause suffer from middle-class opposition?”

Vivie:  “Perhaps.  But it may gain instead the sympathies of the lower and the upper classes.  Why do you bother about Beryl?  I agree with you in disliking all this sexuality...”

Norie:  “Does one ever quite know why one likes people?  There is something about Beryl that gets over me; and she is a worker.  You know how she grappled with that Norfolk estate business?”

Vivie:  “Well, it’s fortunate she and I have not met since Newnham days.  You must tip her the story that I am going away for a time—­abroad—­and that a young—­young, because I look a mere boy, dressed up in men’s clothes—­a young cousin of mine, learned in the law, is going to drop in occasionally and do some of the work...”

Norie:  “I’m afraid I’m rather weak-willed.  I ought to stop this prank before it has gone too far, just as I ought to discourage Beryl’s babies.  Your schemes sound so stagey.  Off the stage you never take people in with such flimsy stories and weak disguises—­you’ll tie yourself up into knots and finally get sent to prison....  However....  I can’t help being rather tickled by your idea.  It’s vilely unjust, men closing two-thirds of the respectable careers to women, to bachelor women above all...” (A pause, and the two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured, straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)—­“Well, go ahead!  Follow your star!  I can be confident of one thing, you won’t do anything mean or disgraceful.  Deceiving Man while his vile laws and restrictions remain in force is no crime.  Be prudent, so far as compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because if you bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave we shall lose a valuable source of income.  Besides:  any public scandal just now in which I was mixed up might kill my mother.  Want any money?”

Vivie:  “You generous darling! Never, never shall I forget your kindness and your trust in me.  You have at any rate saved one soul alive.” (Honoria deprecates gratitude.) “No, I don’t want money—­yet.  You made me take and bank L700 last January over that Rio de Palmas coup—­heaps more than my share.  Altogether I’ve got about L1,000 on deposit at the C. and C. bank, the Temple Bar branch.  I’ve many gruesome faults, but I am thrifty.  I think I can win through to the Bar on that.  Of course, if afterwards briefs don’t come in—­”