Norie:  “I think it began at Cambridge—­the acquaintance did ...  Later, it developed into a passion.  He had already one wife in Sussex somewhere and four children.  He took a flat for her in Town—­a studio—­because Berry had given up mathematics and was going in for sculpture; and there, whenever he could get away from Storrington or some such place and from his City office, he used to visit Beryl.  This had been going on for three years.  But last February she had to break it to her mother that she was six months gone.  The other wife knows all about it but refuses to divorce the naughty architect, and at the same time has cut off supplies—­What cowards men are and how little women stand by women!  And then it’s a poor deanery and Beryl has five younger brothers that have got to be educated.  Her sculpture was little more than commissions executed for her architect’s building and I expect that resource will now disappear ...  I half think I shall bring her in here, when she is well again.  She’s got a very good head-piece and you know we are expanding our business ...  She’d make a good House Agent ...  She writes sometimes for Country Life...”

Vivie:  “Ye-es....  But you can’t provide for many more of our college-mates.  Any more gone wrong?”

Norie:  “It depends how you qualify ‘wrong.’  I really don’t see that it is ‘wronger’ for a young woman to yield to ‘storge’ and have a baby out of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby.  Society doesn’t damn the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric; but it does its best to ruin the woman ... unless she’s an actress or a singer.  If a woman likes to go through all the misery of pregnancy and the pangs of delivery on her own account and without being legally tied up with a man, why can’t she?  Beryl, at any rate, is quite unashamed, and says she shall have as many children as her earnings support ... that it will be great fun choosing their sires—­more variety in their types....  Is she the New Woman, I wonder?”

Vivie:  “Well the whole thing bores me ...  I suppose I am embittered and disgusted.  I’m sick of all this sexual nonsense....  Yes, after all, I approve of the marriage tie:  it takes away the romance of love, and it’s that romance which is usually so time-wasting and so dangerous.  It conceals often a host of horrors ...  But I’m a sort of neuter.  All I want in life is hard work ... a cause to fight for....  Revenge ... revenge on Man.  God!  How I hate men; how I despise them!  We can do anything they can if we train and educate.  I have taken to your business because it is one of the crafty paths we can follow to creep into Man’s fastnesses of the Law, the Stock-Market, the Banks and Actuarial work...”

Norie:  “My dear!  You have quite a platform manner already.  I predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious women....  But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex.  I want women to work—­even at quite humble things—­before they insist on equal rights with man.  At any rate I want to help them to make an honest livelihood without depending on some one man....  Business seems to be good, eh?  If the first half of this year is equalled by the second, I should think there would be a profit to be divided of quite a thousand pounds?”