“But how are you working girls ever going to raise wages unless you get the vote?  It’s the only way men ever get anywhere—­the politicians listen to them.”  She produced from her bag a gold pencil and a tablet.  “Mrs. Ned Carfax is here from Boston—­I saw her for a moment at the hotel she’s been here investigating for nearly three days, she tells me.  I’ll have her send you suffrage literature at once, if you’ll give me your address.”

“You want a vote?” asked Janet, curiously, gazing at the pearl earrings.

“Certainly I want one.”

“Why?”

“Why?” repeated Mrs. Brocklehurst.

“Yes.  You must have everything you want.”

Even then the lady’s sweet reasonableness did not desert her.  She smiled winningly, displaying two small and even rows of teeth.

“On principle, my dear.  For one reason, because I have such sympathy with women who toil, and for another, I believe the time has come when women must no longer be slaves, they must assert themselves, become individuals, independent.”

“But you?” exclaimed Janet.

Mrs. Brocklehurst continued to smile encouragingly, and murmured “Yes?”

“You are not a slave.”

A delicate pink, like the inside of a conch shell, spread over Mrs. Brocklehurst’s cheeks.

“We’re all slaves,” she declared with a touch of passion.  “It’s hard for you to realize, I know, about those of us who seem more fortunate than our sisters.  But it’s true.  The men give us jewels and automobiles and clothes, but they refuse to give us what every real woman craves —­liberty.”

Janet had become genuinely interested.

“But what kind of liberty?”

“Liberty to have a voice, to take part in the government of our country, to help make the laws, especially those concerning working-women and children, what they ought to be.”

Here was altruism, truly!  Here were words that should have inspired Janet, yet she was silent.  Mrs. Brocklehurst gazed at her solicitously.

“What are you thinking?” she urged—­and it was Janet’s turn to flush.

“I was just thinking that you seemed to have everything life has to give, and yet—­and yet you’re not happy.”

“Oh, I’m not unhappy,” protested the lady.  “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know.  You, too, seem to be wanting something.”

“I want to be of use, to count,” said Mrs. Brocklehurst,—­and Janet was startled to hear from this woman’s lips the very echo of her own desires.

Mrs. Brocklehurst’s feelings had become slightly complicated.  It is perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken.  She was, withal, a person of resolution—­of resolution taking the form of unswerving faith in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being carried beyond her depth.  She had the kind of pertinacity that sever admits being out of depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to feel the bottom under one’s feet.  She floated in swift currents.  When life became uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now, as she gazed at the calm but intent face of the girl in front of her, by a characteristic inner refusal to admit that she had accidentally come in contact with something baking.  Therefore she broke the silence.