“I should make it a bit sooner than that,” suggested the elder woman.  “One can’t always stop oneself just where one wants to when sliding down a slope.  It has a knack of getting steeper and steeper as one goes on.”

Madge had asked Joan to come a little earlier so that they could have a chat together before the others arrived.

“I’ve only asked a few,” she explained, as she led Joan into the restful white-panelled sitting-room that looked out upon the gardens.  Madge shared a set of chambers in Gray’s Inn with her brother who was an actor.  “But I have chosen them with care.”

Joan murmured her thanks.

“I haven’t asked any men,” she added, as she fixed Joan in an easy chair before the fire.  “I was afraid of its introducing the wrong element.”

“Tell me,” asked Joan, “am I likely to meet with much of that sort of thing?”

“Oh, about as much as there always is wherever men and women work together,” answered Madge.  “It’s a nuisance, but it has to be faced.”

“Nature appears to have only one idea in her head,” she continued after a pause, “so far as we men and women are concerned.  She’s been kinder to the lower animals.”

“Man has more interests,” Joan argued, “a thousand other allurements to distract him; we must cultivate his finer instincts.”

“It doesn’t seem to answer,” grumbled Madge.  “One is always told it is the artist—­the brain worker, the very men who have these fine instincts, who are the most sexual.”

She made a little impatient movement with her hands that was characteristic of her.  “Personally, I like men,” she went on.  “It is so splendid the way they enjoy life:  just like a dog does, whether it’s wet or fine.  We are always blinking up at the clouds and worrying about our hat.  It would be so nice to be able to have friendship with them.

“I don’t mean that it’s all their fault,” she continued.  “We do all we can to attract them—­the way we dress.  Who was it said that to every woman every man is a potential lover.  We can’t get it out of our minds.  It’s there even when we don’t know it.  We will never succeed in civilizing Nature.”

“We won’t despair of her,” laughed Joan.  “She’s creeping up, poor lady, as Whistler said of her.  We have passed the phase when everything she did was right in our childish eyes.  Now we dare to criticize her.  That shows we are growing up.  She will learn from us, later on.  She’s a dear old thing, at heart.”

“She’s been kind enough to you,” replied Madge, somewhat irrelevantly.  There was a note of irritation in her tone.  “I suppose you know you are supremely beautiful.  You seem so indifferent to it, I wonder sometimes if you do.”

“I’m not indifferent to it,” answered Joan.  “I’m reckoning on it to help me.”

“Why not?” she continued, with a flash of defiance, though Madge had not spoken.  “It is a weapon like any other—­knowledge, intellect, courage.  God has given me beauty.  I shall use it in His service.”