Denzil took a chair.

“Are you busy with any particular subject?” he asked.

“The history of woman in Greece.”

“Profound!  I have as good as forgotten my classics.  You read the originals?”

“After a fashion.  I don’t know much about the enclitic de, and I couldn’t pass an exam. in the hypothetical sentences; but I pick up the sense as I read on.”

Her tone seemed to imply that, after all, she was not ill-versed in grammatical niceties.  She curtailed the word “examination” in an off-hand way which smacked of an undergraduate, and her attitude on the chair suggested that she had half a mind to cross her legs and throw her hands behind her head.

“Then,” said Quarrier, “you have a good deal more right to speak of woman’s claims to independence than most female orators.”

She looked at him with a good-humoured curl of the lip.

“Excuse me if I mention it—­your tone reminds me of that with which you began last evening.  It was rather patronizing.”

“Heaven forbid!  I am very sorry to have been guilty of such ill-manners.”

“In a measure you atoned for it afterwards.  When I got up to offer you my thanks, I was thinking of the best part of your lecture—­ that where you spoke of girls being entrapped into monstrous marriages.  That was generous, and splendidly put.  It seemed to me that you must have had cases in mind.”

For the second time Denzil was unable to meet the steely gaze.  He looked away and laughed.

“Oh, of course I had; who hasn’t—­that knows anything of the world?  But,” he changed the subject, “don’t you find it rather dull, living in a place like Polterham?”

“I have my work here.”

“Work?—­the work of propagandism?”

“Precisely.  It would be pleasant enough to live in London, and associate with people of my own way of thinking; but what’s the good?—­there’s too much of that centralization.  The obscurantists take very good care to spread themselves.  Why shouldn’t those who love the light try to keep little beacons going in out-of-the-way places?”

“Well, do you make any progress?”

“Oh, I think so.  The mere fact of my existence here ensures that.  I dare say you have heard tell of me, as the countryfolk say?”

The question helped Denzil to understand why Mrs. Wade was content with Polterham.  He smiled.

“Your influence won’t be exerted against me, I hope, when the time comes?”

“By no means.  Don’t you see that I have already begun to help you?”

“By making it clear that my Radicalism is not of the most dangerous type?”

They laughed, together, and Quarrier, though the dialogue entertained him, rose as if to depart.

“I will leave you with your Greeks, Mrs. Wade; though I fear you haven’t much pleasure in them from that special point of view.”

“I don’t know; they have given us important types of womanhood.  The astonishing thing is that we have got so little ahead of them in the facts of female life.  Woman is still enslaved, though men nowadays think it necessary to disguise it.”