Vivie:  “Quite.  Of course we are regular pirates.  None of the actuarial or accountancy corporations will admit women, so we can’t pass exams and call ourselves chartered actuaries or incorporated accountants.  But if women clients choose to consult us there is no law to prevent them, or to make our giving advice illegal.  So we advise and estimate and do accounts and calculate probabilities.  Then although we can’t call ourselves Solicitors we can—­or at any rate we do—­give legal advice.  We can’t figure on the Stock Exchange, but we can advise clients about their investments and buy and sell stock and real estate (By the bye I want you to give me your opinion on the tithe question, the liability on that Kent fruit farm).  We are consulted on contracts ...  I’m going to start a women authors’ branch, and perhaps a tourist agency.  Some day we will have a women’s publishing business, we’ll set up a women’s printing press, a paper mill....  Of course as you know I am working hard on law ... not only to understand men’s roguery in every direction, but so that if necessary I can add pleading in the courts to some other woman’s solicitor work.  That’s going to be my first struggle with Man:  to claim admittance to the Bar....  If we can once breach that rampart the Vote must inevitably follow.  Oh how we have been dumb before our shearers!  The rottenness of Man’s law....  The perjury, corruption, waste of time, special pleading that go on in our male courts of injustice, the verdicts of male juries!”

Norie:  “Just so.  But can’t you find a little time to be social?  Why be so morose?  For instance, why not come and be introduced to Michael Rossiter?  He’s a dear—­amazingly clever—­a kind of prophet—­Your one confidant, Stead, thinks a lot of him.”

Vivie:  “Dear Norie—­I can’t.  I swore two years ago I would drop Society and run no risk of being found out as ’Mrs. Warren’s daughter.’  That beast George Crofts revenged himself because I wouldn’t marry him by letting it be known here and there that I was the daughter of the ‘notorious Mrs. Warren’; whereupon several of the people I liked—­you remember?—­dropped me—­the Burne-Joneses, the Lacrevys.  Or if it wasn’t Crofts some other swine did.  But for the fact that it would upset our style as a firm I could change my name:  call myself something quite different....

“D’you know, I’ve sometimes thought I’d cut my hair short and dress in men’s clothes, and go out into the world as a man ... my voice is almost a tenor—­Such a lark!  I’d get admitted to the Bar.  But the nuisance about that would be the references.  I’m an outlaw, you see, through no fault of mine....  I couldn’t give you as a reference, and I don’t know any man who would be generous enough to take the risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed—­good old Praddy.  I’m sure it’s been done now and again.  They call Judge FitzSimmons ‘an old woman.’  Well, d’you know, I believe he is ... a wise old woman.”