marked, with deep vertical furrows generally drawn between them; the chestnut-brown eyes, with long lashes; the high-bridged nose, thin and delicate; the intellectual lips, a protrusion of the lower one, though very slight, marking itself when he caught her profile; the big, strong chin; the shapely neck—­why, after all, it was a kind of beauty.  The head might have been sculptured with fine effect.  And she had a well-built frame.  He observed her strong wrists, with exquisite vein-tracings on the pure white.  Probably her constitution was very sound; she had good teeth, and a healthy brownish complexion.

With reference to the sick girl whom Miss Barfoot was visiting, Everard began what was practically a resumption of their last talk.

‘Have you a formal society, with rules and so on?’

‘Oh no; nothing of the kind.’

‘But you of course select the girls whom you instruct or employ?’

‘Very carefully.’

‘How I should like to see them all!—­I mean,’ he added, with a laugh, ’it would he so very interesting.  The truth is, my sympathies are strongly with you in much of what you said the other day about women and marriage.  We regard the matter from different points of view, but our ends are the same.’

Rhoda moved her eyebrows, and asked calmly,—­

‘Are you serious?’

’Perfectly.  You are absorbed in your present work, that of strengthening women’s minds and character; for the final issue of this you can’t care much.  But to me that is the practical interest.  In my mind, you are working for the happiness of men.’

‘Indeed?’ escaped Rhoda’s lips, which had curled in irony.

’Don’t misunderstand me.  I am not speaking cynically or trivially.  The gain of women is also the gain of men.  You are bitter against the average man for his low morality; but that fault, on the whole, is directly traceable to the ignobleness of women.  Think, and you will grant me this.’

‘I see what you mean.  Men have themselves to thank for it.’

’Assuredly they have.  I say that I am on your side.  Our civilization in this point has always been absurdly defective.  Men have kept women at a barbarous stage of development, and then complain that they are barbarous.  In the same way society does its best to create a criminal class, and then rages against the criminals.  But, you see, I am one of the men, and an impatient one too.  The mass of women I see about me are so contemptible that, in my haste, I use unjust language.  Put yourself in the man’s place.  Say that there are a million or so of us very intelligent and highly educated.  Well, the women of corresponding mind number perhaps a few thousands.  The vast majority of men must make a marriage that is doomed to be a dismal failure.  We fall in love it is true; but do we really deceive ourselves about the future?  A very young man may; why, we know of very young men who are so frantic as to marry girls of the working class—­mere lumps of human flesh.  But most of us know that our marriage is a pis aller.  At first we are sad about it; then we grow cynical, and snap our fingers at moral obligation.’