Chapter VIII: Part II: I (3)

"You didn't know you'd been lunching in a regular museum of it all, did you?"

"A museum? A catacomb!"

"You wouldn't suppose that we lived in this Year of Grace, would you?"

"About 1100, _I_ should have said."

"Oh no," Amory interrupted, "under Feudalism it would have been all right. It would have been proper to their stage of development. But--to-day! Or rather next April, I should say----!"

"The hands of the clock are to be set back in April?"

"So the doctor says. I dare say his rule-of-thumb carries him as far as that."

"Awful impostors, doctors."

Then Amory spoke slowly and impressively.--"What I want to know is, how much longer _can_ Individualism last? We heard that American lady last year; would you have thought it _possible_ that the system could have survived such a slashing attack? When _will_ people begin to have even a rudimentary conception of the function of the State in these matters? When _will_ they see, for instance, that when a dispute arises between a parent and a child the case is exactly like any other dispute, with the plaintiff on one side and the defendant on the other? If the parent's the plaintiff, how can he speak for the defendant as well? Why, it's making him judge and executioner and all the lot!... And those, Cosimo," she went on, with still deeper gravity, into which contempt crept, "are my aunt's and uncle's ideas! Violence, harshness, and repression. Russianizing the Home, instead of abolishing it altogether, or only allowing it under the very strictest inspection, in such cases as when a parent has really proved his fitness for Child-culture! The Home!... Oh, when _will_ the dawn come?" She turned up the pretty eyes to the sky; she spoke passionately. "Aunt Jerry fit to be a Mother of the Race! Why," she broke out witheringly--"has she (to begin with the very elements) a notion of what to feed a child on? Does she know what a proteid is? Does she know what albumen is? Has she as much as seen a bit of yeast under the microscope? (I have; a girl once showed me.) Doesn't she choose her very feeding-bottles out of these awful circulars of Dorothy's or whose ever they are? And the clothes she showed us!... Ribbons, pink if it's a girl and blue if it's a boy! This hateful insistence on sex from the very beginning! From before the beginning!... And the pride of these people in their ignorance and conceit! Bursting with it!"...

Cosimo was awed. But he was glad, too, that there was no more talk about the end of their friendship. Amory was incomparable. Never had he honoured her so. It was almost a pity she painted, so magnificent a lecturer was lost in her. Not that just at present she was painting very much. She was doing better than painting. With all the strength of which she was capable she was resolutely _not_ painting. She was laying strong and enduring foundations. There would be time enough for pinnacles by and by.

"And then," Amory continued, more quietly, but even more stingingly, "in what spirit do they undertake this enormous responsibility? From the highest motive known to Ethics you'd think, wouldn't you--the sense of Duty to Mankind? Yes, you'd think so. You wouldn't think they'd regard it as a mere personal gratification, would you? You wouldn't think they thought they'd accounted for it all when they said they were 'in love,' would you? But it is so, Cosimo. That's exactly their mental development. They are exactly as advanced as the animals. Neither more nor less.... Mind you, I don't deny what's called 'love' altogether. I suppose it does serve some such purpose as the perfume does to the flower. The perfume attracts insects, and insects do fertilize some flowers. So love has its place. But what I want to know is, is it going to be allowed to supplant plain reason and common sense? I say no. There ought to be a State Mating-season. They can do it about fishing and game; why not about love? Because everything's in the hands of men, and men think more about fishing and game than they do about these things. Oh, if only a Woman would arise! We should soon see all this altered!"...

"Well, you know I'm heart and soul with you about that, Amory," Cosimo said, a little uneasily, as if he personally might be included in her arraignment of his sex.

"You!" said Amory, with an intellectually affectionate look of her golden eyes.... "If it weren't for you, Cosimo, I should despair altogether. Nobody else understands me--nobody. The others--well, take a man like Hamilton Dix, who might be supposed to have higher interests: really, it's as much as I've been able to do sometimes to keep him from pawing me! And once he did kiss my hand.... Cosimo"--she lifted the golden eyes almost bashfully, and then dropped them again--"I said last night that there ought perhaps to be an end of our friendship. Not an end, I mean, because I should always respect you and honour your views. And I still think it might be best. But--I don't know whether I should have the strength to do it, Cosimo. I ought to, but--I'm only a woman in some things. I know they aren't the real things, and it's only because my sex has been downtrodden and we've been denied our opportunities; but we do have transmitted fears from those barbarous times when you used to drag us about by the hair. So I don't know whether I should really have the strength, Cosimo----"

She was even nobler in her confession of weakness than she had been in the strength and rush of her outburst. Again, for no reason that he could have explained, Cosimo felt a brute.... He paw this bright little creature, as the odious Dix had done? He sully a thing so radiant as their relation with--pawing?

Suddenly Cosimo found himself disliking Mr. Hamilton Dix more intensely than he had ever done before.

Amory, for her part--though she did not know whose--rather fancied that she had put a spoke into somebody's wheel.

V

BOND AND FREE

The truth was, Amory presently began to tell herself, that Cosimo's life was in danger of becoming rather an aimless sort of thing. Few people knew the perils of aimlessness so well as did Amory Towers. She knew them because for a time she had suffered them in her own thought and work. But that was all past now. She had begun to work again. The foundations of a real picture were being laid at last. This was the famous canvas, "Barrage," that afterwards made her name. None knew better than Amory herself its shortcomings as mere painting, but she had learned in bitterness that issues greater than those of painting were at stake to-day. To-day or never was the time to do all the things that had never been done. Accordingly, her picture was partly a painting and partly a sociological symbol. It was, as far as it was at present designed, a medley in which, before a series of guarded cave-mouths and dropped portcullises and defended doors, women of the various stages of civilization were grouped with men. Now they were in the attitude of menials at their feet, or hewing their wood, or drawing their water; anon, set on high pedestals, before which men made mock reverences, they stood wreathed with roses from beneath which iron fetters peeped grimly forth; and later, in apotheosis, Womanhood herself walked by man's side, equal, sworded, flashing and free. If something of a likeness to Amory herself was to be traced in all these figures, every artist who works in a single room knows how frequently, for lack of pence, he must use himself as a model. It was this picture, of which more later, that enabled Amory to see so clearly the peril that beset Cosimo.

Of course Amory recognized that Cosimo was not absolutely aimless as long as he had Amory's own art to admire; but that was a narrow and selfish way of looking at it. Amory didn't want Cosimo to admire her art for any personal glory she might get of it. She wanted him, not for herself, but for a Cause. In her picture he posed as the champion who had stricken the bonds from the belted and sworded and flashing and free young woman (who was quite frankly Amory herself), because that was the _rôle_ she wished to see him in; but she knew how easy it would be (Cosimo was so good natured) for any designing and retrogressive young woman to get hold of him and to enlist his support for the forces of conservatism and the night. That (Amory's pretty lips compressed and her eyes shone with a cold and opal-like fire) _must_ not be. In order that it might not be, Amory had made use of Dorothy's name; not that she really wanted him to marry Dorothy, but that even to marry Dorothy would be better than to marry somebody more benighted still. It was a mere _ruse de guerre_, justified by the larger issue. These things have to be done when the fiends of ignorance and the angels of knowledge contend. Amory called these fiends and angels the Anabolic and the Katabolic forces in human progress. It didn't matter what you called them. Two principles always had contended and always would contend. It was a Law.

Therefore Amory wanted Cosimo on the side of the angels and victory. Ever so much more she wanted him on that side now that he was a man of some substance. For money is the sinews of Anabolic and Katabolic warfare also. Cosimo with his money and Amory with her new art--what might they not accomplish, working together? A whole Promised Land of endeavour lay shining before them. For Amory herself (for example) there were all the possibilities of symbolic painting--a style of painting which (actual draughtsmanship being admittedly her weak point) would suit her genius the more exactly for that very reason. Nobody can dismiss a symbol because it is badly drawn; any old drawing will do for a symbol. For the holy purposes of social regeneration the novelists thought any old writing good enough; and so it was. So it should be for Amory too. She had half a mind to let drawing go altogether. Then, with drawing out of the way, she saw her task. "Barrage" would be followed by a picture (perhaps a newer word than "picture" would be necessary to describe it) that would symbolize Labour Unrest; she was thinking it out in her spare moments already. Then there should be another, a slap in the face for Militarism. After that should come canvases dealing with Education, and Disestablishment, and the Triumph of Sentimental Government and the establishment of the New Matriarchy. Oh yes, Amory saw her task though twenty lifetimes lay before her....

And Cosimo? She could guide Cosimo too. No doubt at his own doors in Shropshire there lay wrongs to be righted--sites for village halls waiting to be built upon, libraries and communal kitchens and wash-houses to be founded, greens for morrice-games (Amory vetoed archery, as coming dangerously near to Militarism and the miniature rifle-range), societies for the study of folk-song, ethical societies, lectures on economics, bands for the exchange of foreign picture postcards (that the spirit of brotherhood among the enlightened of all nations might be fostered), and so on.... Oh, with Amory to direct him, there would be plenty for Cosimo, too, to do. And he had the money with which to do it.

And if Amory shrank from the cost to herself--the cost, namely, of conforming to the outworn institution of marriage--it was but for a moment. What was she, to attempt to stem the River of the Race? She must bear the burden cheerfully. And after all, with a little thought she ought to be able to ensure it that Cosimo as her husband should not be very different from Cosimo as he was now. By keeping his eyes constantly uplifted to the shining peaks of their joint duty, mere personal thoughts of self could be kept in their place. He would hardly want a wife when he possessed the heroine of a Feminist Crusade, she hardly a husband when she had an ally placed by his sex in the fortress that, whether by beleaguering or by assault, must be won. Yes, she would strive to bear even this. The glory of a campaign would supplant the private self-seeking of a courtship. They would mingle, not love-sick sighs, but the aspirations of their souls. No doubt when they were both old, and looked back, it would seem well worth the cost....

Amory herself would have been the first to confess the weakness that set her wondering how many bedrooms the Shropshire house had, and whether there were rose gardens and fruit trees on the southern walls. Even from thoughts of duty weak mortals must sometimes stoop. Besides, if there was not a village green with a maypole on it, some arrangement would probably have to be made. Amory didn't think she would want morrice-dancing on the lawn in front of the drawing-room windows, except, of course, on birthdays and festival days and the days when the tenants paid their rent. The people themselves would probably prefer to have their merrymaking to themselves. Very likely they would only be shy before their betters. She would show the tenantry (she did not insist on the name) every consideration, as she should expect them to consider her.... And if there was a lily garden as well as a rose garden, she would send lilies as well as roses to the cottages quite frequently.

But Cosimo must be saved for the Cause quickly, for he was giving up his studio in March, and once he got away again he might fall into the hands of the designing woman whose existence Amory had suspected. She knew those designing women. She knew them by the simple process of inversion of everything that was noble within herself.

Amory had only seen Dorothy Lennard once since the afternoon when Dorothy had promised to see what she could do about Croziers' contract. That had been when Dorothy had come to tell her of the mitigation of its rigour she had secured from Hamilton Dix. But, finding herself in Oxford Street one afternoon, she sought Hallowells', and tried to find her way upstairs to the fashion-studio. "Tried," one says, for nearly twenty minutes Amory was hopelessly lost in the wilderness that seemed to grow ever more and more complicated as the time fixed for the opening drew nearer. It was during her wandering through this labyrinth that Amory received a shock. Passing along a corridor of such vast length that she seemed to be looking at it through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses, she entered a large apartment where three women on their knees polished the floor. There she saw a large historical painting. It was the picture of Queen Bess, Sir Walter, and the Cloak.

Her first impulse was to fall back; her second one, which she obeyed, was to stand her ground, to put her head back and a little on one side, and to smile defiantly, indulgently, truculently, all three. It was as if she said to the picture, "We meet unexpectedly, but since we are here we may as well have a few words together, you and I!"

A certain amount of skill, manual and ocular, had gone to the making of the picture--enough, as we have seen, to "hit" Mr. Miller "right there." Perhaps that was the reason why it hit Amory right there too, though in the contrary sense. She stepped forward and examined it near; then she stepped back and examined it at a distance. As she did so, a man in an astrachan-collared overcoat and an indented grey hat hurried past, dropping his cigar and uncovering his head as he found himself in the presence of a lady, even one he did not know; and then Amory continued her gazing.

The picture struck her as incredibly funny. First, there was the subject--"Our old friend Chivalry," Amory mused. Oh yes, Chivalry in other words, those garlands of roses in her own picture beneath which the iron chains peeped forth. Chivalry! Oh yes, Amory knew--any feminist knows--the toils men impose on women when they talk about Chivalry! Amory became cynical.... Let them amend the Divorce Laws, and _then_ Amory would listen to what they had to say about Chivalry! Let them give women equal opportunities with men, and she would excuse the lifting of a hat or the offering of a seat in a train! Chivalry might have had its place in the social organization of the Year Dot (see "Barrage"), but things had moved a bit since then, and woman to-day _would_ walk through puddles if she wished, though twenty cloaks were outspread for her to step on! Thank you very much for your Chivalry ... and _now_ will you give us a little Justice for a change?... And then the complacent handling of the thing! There was really nothing to be said! Nobody could say it wasn't "finished"; that was just it; it was fatally "finished"; the man had done exactly what he had set out to do, and--there it was. No unseizable desire, no unattainable dream, no Promethean attempt, no suspicion that here was not the last possible word on the subject; and _this_ in a new and straining and eager age, when men were just beginning to know that they knew nothing, and to put off their past boastings, and to take the cave-dweller into their counsels as their equal, perhaps their superior, in knowledge! Here, actually to-day, was a man who truly thought that he knew a thing or two more than the cave-dweller! Oh, the smugness, the self-satisfaction! Really, Amory would not dare to show such a man her "Barrage"; its pure heart of fire, shining even through all its shortcomings, would have shrivelled him and his conceit up! For surely there, in "Barrage," was the true impulse of the arts to-day. Some called it "propagandist," but what, Amory wanted to know, had all these Virgins and Children, all these Crucifixions, all these Holy Families of the past been but propaganda? The arts had been shackled to the propagation of superstition and dogma, and of the tenets of a religion that had found its expression one day in seven; but in the Newer Day all days were going to be equally holy, with the abolition of the Sabbath as a first step to the consecration of the other six. To the Virgins and Children of the future a proper comprehension of the Rights of Woman and the Responsibilities of Parentage would be brought. Eugenics would have a word to say about the Holy Families. The Crucifixions would probably be cut out altogether.... To bring that day nearer was Amory's mission. If she could only sell "Barrage"--and she thought she could now, for the Women's Manumission Guild had approached her about it, and an Executive was further considering it....

And she would ask a good price for it, for the labourer is worthy of her hire, and she really must study her dress a little more....

Amory turned away from the picture and resumed her search for Dorothy.

But she had hardly left the room where the women polished the floors (showing how, even in physical strength, women were not the inferiors of men), when she received a second shock. She was backing out again from a room where a telescopic ladder rose to a sagging sheet under a skylight when she saw, beyond an oval section of redwood counter, the fair head of Dorothy herself. It was now luncheon time, the workmen had left, and Dorothy appeared to be eating her lunch amid the smell of shavings and varnish and plaster. Amory advanced.

But once more, she started back. She saw that Dorothy was not alone. And not only was Dorothy not alone, but she was sitting with a good-looking but ridiculously smart young man on a box so narrow that from mere necessity the young man had passed his arm about Dorothy's waist. They were eating sandwiches from a paper bag, and if they were not sharing the same glass of lemonade, the second glass was certainly not visible.

Then, with his mouth full of sandwich, the young man kissed Dorothy, who performed the same idiotic gesture on him in return.

Now no really sensitive person likes to see other persons in the act of an embrace, and Amory was exquisitely sensitive. And in this hard world it is the sensitive person who suffers for the dull. Further, even suffering takes a keener edge when you are seen to suffer. Therefore the least that Dorothy and her smart young man could have done, when, turning, they became aware of Amory's presence, would have been to spare her the gratuitous pain of looking at her. But they did not. Having outraged her, they stared at her. They stared at her almost as if they asked her what she meant by stealing upon them like that. It struck Amory as it had never struck her before that Glenerne would have been Dorothy's proper place. If this was the way she carried on during lunch time at Hallowells', nothing at the boarding-house would have shocked her.

"Hallo!" said Dorothy, not (Amory thought) exactly welcomingly.

Still, if Dorothy had no tact, that was no reason why Amory should not act up to her own finest instincts. The truest delicacy would be to let it be supposed that she had noticed nothing. Therefore she too said "Hallo!" very brightly. They must not guess that they had caused her pain.

At first Amory thought that Dorothy was not going to introduce her friend, but when Dorothy did so, in three words--"My cousin Stan"--she was able to guess that even Dorothy was not quite without some sense of shame and confusion. Her cousin! Such unfertility of invention would have done discredit even to Jellies! But of course Dorothy was embarrassed, and had said the first thing that had come into her head. Amory bowed with reserve to "the cousin," who, for his part, seemed inclined to laugh. Very rudely, he pulled out his watch.

"By Jove, a quarter to two! I must cut, Dot. Dusty'll be looking for me. See you at tea-time? Right, I'll ring you up. So long."

And with scarce a look at Amory he was off.

No sooner had he gone than Amory broke into voluble speech.

"My dear, _what_ a place! I've been looking everywhere for you this last half-hour--upstairs, downstairs, everywhere! I was almost sure I remembered the way to the studio--wasn't it past a square room that has a painting in it now?"

"It was, but they moved us two months ago," Dorothy replied. "Did you ask for me?"

"Do you mean how did I get in? I just walked up. Nobody stopped me. Is it against the rules?"

"It doesn't matter, as it happens. But I'm afraid I've had lunch."

"Oh, thanks awfully, but I always go to one of those Food Reform places now; I feel ever so much better for it. I was only passing, and thought I'd look in."

"Good of you," said Dorothy, and there was a longish pause.

Amory thought it was not very clever of Dorothy not to be able to conceal her chagrin. Amory herself always tried to behave better than that to people who went out of their way to call on her. Probably what was really the matter was Dorothy's conscience; one cannot hold aloof from the noble movements of the day without at times feeling a little uneasy about it. But Causes can afford to be magnanimous. If Dorothy wanted to out-pause Amory, Amory would let her; and, that absurd picture being uppermost in her mind, she gave a little laugh and spoke of that.

"It's easy to see _you're_ not the art-adviser to Hallowells', Dorothy," she said. "_Must_ they buy such things? And what are they going to do with it? Get it lithographed, I suppose, for a supplement or something?"

When the subject of painting was raised Dorothy was still a little afraid of Amory and her superior knowledge--but less so than she had been. Twice in the course of its production she had seen "Barrage," and had stood apologetically silent before Amory's picture. At another time she would not have excited herself one way or the other about Sir Walter, but new forces thrust some of us into conservatism whether we will or not, and "Barrage" had made Dorothy almost ready to swallow Sir Walter holus-bolus. Therefore she said a little defensively, "What's the matter with it?"

"The matter!" Amory exclaimed. She was smiling. If Dorothy meant this for a joke she was quite willing to enter into it.

"Well," said Dorothy, more defensively still, "everybody isn't trying to do nothing but the greatest things all the time, after all."

"Oh, ça se voit!" Amory returned, rippling outright into a laugh.

"And," Dorothy continued, hating herself because Amory seemed to be driving her into a defence even of the absurd and solemn Miller, "we're only a business concern, not an Exhibition, you know."

"Oh? The wonderful thing isn't for sale, then?"

"No; and anyway, Mr. Dix didn't laugh at it." (This was true. Mr. Dix did not laugh at his bread when Hallowells' spread it with an extra thick helping of butter.)

Amory kept a straight face.--"Dorothy," she said, "what's happened to you?"

"How, happened to me?" Dorothy returned, a little tartly. That confounded "Barrage" had put her into an altogether false position. "Nothing's happened to me. Never mind me; tell me what's fresh with you. Has anything happened about your own picture yet?"

The fact that Dorothy was evidently rather cross was enough to make Amory aware of the superiority of cheerfulness. Besides, it might not be amiss to show Dorothy that, high and ideal as the Cause was, it was not quite without its mundane and practical side. That at any rate would not be beyond Dorothy's comprehension. Therefore Amory told Dorothy how the negotiations stood between herself and the Manumission League for the purchase of "Barrage."

Dorothy listened attentively. When Amory had finished she paused....

"Two hundred pounds, you say? Would that be for a sale outright?"

"Yes."

"And they'd be able to do whatever they liked with it--reproduce it or anything?"

"I suppose so. Do you mean it isn't enough?"

"I wasn't thinking of that so much. I was thinking--but of course I don't know all the circumstances."

"I'm not keeping anything back from you, Dorothy," said Amory. Indeed she wasn't. She knew that Dorothy's advice on such a point would be well worth having.

"Oh, I don't mean that at all," Dorothy hastened to say. "I only mean that it's hard to form a judgment without having seen for yourself. I don't like the idea of selling anything outright. If it was only a nominal royalty, in case they wanted to reproduce or anything of that sort----"

"Oh, that! As for that, I should be only too glad to let them reproduce if they wanted."

"Of course you would get the advertisement, but I don't see why you shouldn't have a small royalty too."

Amory smiled. The advertisement! Wasn't that just like dear old Dorothy! As if all the costly things that had gone to the making of "Barrage" could be valued and bartered like that! Amory explained gently.

"I don't think you quite understand, Dorothy. You see, it isn't like those other things Croziers' got. Those were just knocked off. I don't want to be conceited about 'Barrage,' but it has rather taken it out of me, in thought and emotion and those things. I've been feeling a perfect rag after a day at it. Of course, there were heaps of things I should like to do to it, but 'No,' I said that morning, 'you've expressed yourself, and if you began tickling it up here and there you'd only take away from the fierce meaning of it.' So I threw my brushes down, and then collapsed--perfectly limp."

"Oh!" said Dorothy deferentially. She herself had once collapsed during a spring rush, but that had been a quite inferior collapsing, from too long hours simply, not from any emotional strain. But Amory misinterpreted her mild and respectful "Oh!" She spoke rather sweetly.

"Of course I must live, and nobody can say I don't live frugally. But that apart, I don't do this for money at all. I do it because of my beliefs."

"Oh!" said Dorothy again, this time very much as some gallant monarch might have protested that he never meddled with the beliefs of ladies.

"I know," Amory continued firmly, "that there are some things we don't agree on, and of course I think I'm right and you're wrong, or I shouldn't believe what I do. But I do think that that picture in there," she made a little vague pointing movement, "preaches--well, a perfectly damnable lesson--from the feminist point of view perfectly damnable."

"I--I don't think it's meant to," Dorothy ventured to say. "I don't so much mind it really--not that it pretends to be very much--but parts of it are quite like something, and I think painting has to be like things when all's said and done--I mean--certain sorts of painting----"

It was rather a tickling experience for Amory to be schooled by a fashion-artist on "sorts of painting," and she wished Cosimo had been there to hear. And on these lines she knew that she could play with Dorothy as a cat plays with a mouse. So she was beginning, "Oh, why must painting necessarily be 'like' things, as you say? Is it a Law? Do tell me!" when suddenly Dorothy took her back altogether. For all the world as if both of them had been talking about one thing and thinking of another all the time, Dorothy boiled up.

"Oh, Amory, you do make me so cross!" she cried. "Really, to hear you sometimes, nobody would think an awfully pretty girl was talking! Who cares a button about your opinions, with looks like yours? I could understand it if you were plain! I do wish you could manage to be a bit more like a human being; why don't you put on some clothes like other people's, instead of always dressing as if you were going to have a baby? Can't you take an interest in things, instead of always moping the way you do? Why, you might be a superfluous woman yourself!"

For one moment Amory fairly lost her composure, but only for one moment. The next moment she had seen what was the matter. By "taking an interest in things" Dorothy meant forsaking her principles; by "putting on clothes like other people's," she meant abandoning her velvets and corduroys that took the light in such lovely broken bits of accidental colour, and dressing like one of her own impossible fashion-plates; and by being "a bit more like a human being," she meant sitting with a young man on a box and kissing him with a mouth full of sandwich. It was almost too funny to laugh at. If Dorothy would only ask her outright what she evidently had in her mind to ask her--why she didn't marry Cosimo--it would be perfect. Poor old Dot! She had been fairly caught only a few minutes before, and naturally would still feel rather sore. Amory waited for her to go on.

She did go on. "I've wanted to say this for a long time," she said. "Look here, Amory, why don't you marry Cosimo and have done with it? You're lovely--he's quite good-looking--you seem to understand one another all right--I'm sure you ought to by this time--and it would be ever so much more sensible! It seems to me you could drag on like this for ever!"

Amory's golden eyes seemed to dance with mirth. Of course that accidental discovery had forced Dorothy's hand beautifully. Dorothy was pleading with her as earnestly as if she had just been seen, not "canoodling" under a counter (that Amory believed was the word used in such cases), but lifted up on a plinth, in a heroic pose, with an archangel by her side, grouped with their faces towards the east or in whatever quarter the sun of Feminism might be expected to rise.... Amory had not even to say anything. All she needed to do was to stand smiling at dear old Dot and to watch her grow redder and redder. Obviously there was no need to accuse Dorothy when Dorothy was accusing herself.

In another moment, too, Dorothy was defending herself. Her eyes, in the surrounding flush of colour, seemed bluer than ever. And in jumping straight at Amory's thought she skipped a stage.

"I don't care anyway," she blurted out. "Some things _are_ understandable, but you and Cosimo--well, who's to make head or tail of _you_? You're always together, early and late, sometimes in your place and sometimes in his--of course _I_ understand, dear, but really I don't see how you could blame people who didn't if--if----"

Already Amory had drawn herself up to her full five foot against the redwood counter and had tossed back the bright nasturtium of her head.

"If what?" she asked, the brook-brown eyes looking full into Dorothy's blue ones.

"Well, if they draw their own conclusions, if you must know," Dorothy blurted out.

As a wet cloth wipes chalk from a blackboard, so the smile had gone from Amory's face. Most decidedly she wasn't going to stand this--at any rate not from Dorothy.

"Oh!" she said. "What people? And what conclusions?"

"Well, people do. You can't expect to have no conclusions drawn but your own."

"You mean conclusions about me and Cosimo?"

"I'm not saying _I_ draw any, Amory. I understand perfectly, of course. I mean I know there's nothing wrong. But you can't stop people talking."

Amory became still taller.

"May I ask who's been talking?" she added. "I won't say besides yourself, but this is the first I've heard of it."

"Amory!" said Dorothy, deeply wounded. She lifted her eyes almost humbly. "Do you really think that of me?"

"What am I to think?" Amory replied loftily. Yet she was glad that Dorothy had the grace to be ashamed. By twisting and turning and a shameless use of her charms Dorothy might contrive to get her own way with men, but she must not think she could come it over one of her own sex in the same way.

"Oh dear, I'm sorry I said anything at all!" Dorothy wailed.

"Oh, I'm glad, I assure you!" Amory replied quickly. "I don't believe in driving these things underground and then pretending they don't exist! If a thing is, I want to see it _as_ it is!"

"I know you're ever so much braver than I am, dear--I know I'm a dreadful coward at a push--you're worth twenty of me--but still, Amory, people _do_ say things, and not very nice ones, and it could so easily be avoided----"

"Avoided!"

"I know there isn't anything--I only mean the appearance to people who don't know----"

"And what," said Amory slowly, "do you suppose _I_ care for people of that kind, and what they think?"

"Yes, you always were splendid and brave--still----"

"Have you heard anybody talking like this?" Amory demanded.

"I said it was a wicked lie----"

"Ah, you _have_ heard somebody!"

"Not really saying anything--only wondering--you know how people wonder----"

"Then please tell me at once who it was," said Amory with dignity.

But Dorothy only grew more confused than ever.

"Oh, Amory, I can't do that--it was nothing that wasn't fair in a way--you oughtn't to ask me to do that----"

"Be so good as to tell me at once."

Dorothy was silent.

As a matter of fact the people who had been speaking of Amory and Cosimo were Walter Wyron and Laura Beamish, but Dorothy did weakly hope that if things were driven underground they might at least be forgotten.

"Aren't you going to tell me?" Amory demanded.

"No," Dorothy mumbled.

"You refuse?"

"Yes," Dorothy mumbled. And then suddenly she broke out almost passionately--

"I don't blame you in the very least, Amory, but I do blame Cosimo! I do, and it's no good saying I don't. A man's no right to be always about with a woman, getting her talked about, and doing things for her, and always in and out of her place! I do think he might know better!"

Amory was smiling again now, but not very pleasantly--"Oh!" she said. "So when you said you thought I ought to marry Cosimo, you meant that things had gone so far that I might as well?"

"I didn't, Amory. I didn't, I didn't!" Dorothy cried appealingly. "I really think you do seem to hit it off together somehow. And as for what people say, _you_ say what _you_ think about people, and they've a right to do the same, and anyway you can't stop them, and you can't expect to have the world to yourself. Why, I thought you were always talking about 'equal rights.'"

"I don't know whether you know that just at present you're talking about a very precious and beautiful friendship!" said Amory proudly.

"Yes, I do know--I mean I suppose so--you really are such chums, I know----"

"And I hope and trust the day's coming when such a thing can be without nasty prurient minds 'drawing their own conclusions,' as you call it, Dorothy!... Perhaps," the golden eyes were sidelong now on Dorothy's, "perhaps there was some particular--compromising situation--your friend objected to? Or was it merely the whole scandalous relation?"

Suddenly Dorothy, for her part also, did not much like the tone of this. She felt as if that sandwich might still have left crumbs upon her mouth. There might be a good many things to be said about her cousin Stanhope, but at any rate he did not compromise her on principle, nor did he discuss with her some of the rather astonishing subjects that seemed to come into this precious and beautiful friendship of Amory Towers and Cosimo Pratt. She would bow to Amory's superior knowledge when it came to matters of art, but she wasn't going to have even Amory's foot on her neck if Stan was to be dragged into the dispute. And if Dorothy again skipped a step in the chain of processes, she thought she had reason.

"I suppose that's because you caught me out a few minutes ago?" she said, rather challengingly.

"I'm not sure that I quite follow you. I'm sorry if I'm dull."

"Very well, if you want it more plainly, you said 'compromising situation' because you caught us just now. I've always stood up for you, Amory, but I'm not going to let you talk like that."

"Sorry," said Amory offhandedly.

"Well, you needn't say so in that tone either; we don't expect everybody to go about whistling, or knocking at doors and then waiting, like that charwoman and her daughter. I'm sorry if we shocked you."

"I don't think I mentioned--what you seem to be talking about, Dorothy. If I did I don't remember."

"You were thinking about it, though."

"Oh!..."

As if people might say what they liked about Amory and Cosimo, but Amory might not even think what she liked about Dorothy and Stan!

There was a rather hostile pause. Probably either felt that the particular male of her preference was being subjected to criticism.

"Well, we needn't quarrel about it," Dorothy resumed.

Amory brightened remarkably.

"Quarrel? Of course not, dear Dorothy--what an absurd idea! And of course, as you say, I _was_ thinking.... Are you--you know--may I congratulate you?" she asked softly.

Again Dorothy reddened. She would dearly have liked to fling a triumphant "Yes, we _are_ engaged!" into Amory's pretty face, but she and Stanhope had their pact about that. They were not officially engaged. Once more Amory had her at a disadvantage.

"No," she said shortly. It cost her a struggle not to add the mitigating words "Not yet."

"Oh ... I beg your pardon," said Amory, instantly apologetic. "You see----" she hesitated.

"Well, what do I see?" Dorothy Lennard demanded. Against her wishes she felt herself getting angry again.

"Well, dear, you _did_ ask me about Cosimo----"

"You're not engaged to him, are you?"

"No--but then----"

"You mean you don't let him kiss you?" sprang from Dorothy's lips.

Amory thought it crude--revolting....

Then for the second time Dorothy boiled up and over.

"Well, it seems to me you might just as well!" she cried. "Better, I should say--it seems to me you do everything else! I think I've given up trying to understand you clever people; you're beyond me entirely. I _like_ being a man's plaything--_there!_ I don't mind one little bit being a chattel--_there!_ And I think it would be perfectly ripping being property, as long as you belonged to the right person! And I _do_ believe in one law for the man and another for the woman. They _are_ different--they _are_, Amory! They're--they're--_ever_ so different! And I'm glad!... And it seems to me that if you and Cosimo lived in the same house you needn't kiss one another if you didn't want to, and anyway it would save a good deal of walking about! That alone might be worth getting married for--you could talk about the State quite undisturbed then! I know it's no business of mine, but you shouldn't look at me as you have been doing for the last ten minutes all on account of nothing! I'm sorry if I seem angry, because I'm not bad-tempered really, but dash it all, I do think it's the one thing a woman can't afford to be impracticable about, and sometimes you really do seem hopeless, Amory!... Unless----" she checked herself instantly.

But it was too late. She had said the word. Amory knew what it was that she had cut off so short--"Unless you _do_ know your business after all, and think that always sitting in his pocket, and letting him play with your hair, and talking about Heredity all the time, is the way to get him!" That was the peck that Dorothy measured her out of her own bushel! Those were the very methods by which Dorothy herself got round her Mr. Miller, and her Mr. Hamilton Dix, and this smart young man, whoever he was....

She meant that between herself and Amory there was not at bottom a pin to choose....

And since the Cause of Progress did demand that Amory should marry Cosimo, even had it all been true the end would still have justified those or almost any other means. There precisely lay the rub. What are you to say to a person so blind to true meanings as to accuse you of doing what, quite inessentially, you do merely happen to be doing? You cannot admit that they are right--they are so hideously wrong: you cannot tell them they are wrong--they cling so stupidly to a certain appearance of being right. What _are_ you to do?

One thing at least Amory did: she hated Dorothy in that moment. And because she herself wished to be merciful to Dorothy she did not take up that fatal "Unless----" Instead she said, very gently indeed:

"Aren't you rather taking the lowest view of things? _Must_ this physical side always be dragged in?"

Nor was Dorothy very much disposed now to mince matters. The word had popped out, and she was not going to run away from it. If Amory wanted to talk about physical sides, she might; Dorothy's own physique overshadowed Amory's as a ruffled swan overshadows a duckling. She turned, her bosom high, her hands stroking down her waist.

"But it's _you_ who drag it in!" she cried. "If only you _weren't_ always talking about it! But you only pretend you're only talking about something else; it seems to me you _never_ let it alone! What's your Eugenics, if it isn't that, and your Balance of the Sexes, and your State Nurseries? You aren't a snuffy old man writing learned treatises about it all; you're a pretty girl, and I dare say you're quite right, but I don't see the use of pretending----"

"Do you mean that I'm pretending to be something I'm not?" Amory asked sharply. "Say what you mean. Perhaps you mean virtuous?"

Dorothy stamped. "Oh ... need we?"

"Because if you really care to know----" said Amory proudly.

"Oh ... I'm going. Good-bye."

"You _can't_ go now," said Amory significantly. "Think for a moment and you'll see that you can't go now. People can't make charges and then run away. It isn't done, Dorothy."

"How absurd! Who's made charges?"

"I understood you to say that I was a pretender?"

"Don't be so ridiculous! You know very well what I mean!"

"Then you should be more careful about your expressions, Dorothy. Expression is all people have to go by, you know; expression's precisely art, in fact. But I should like you to tell whoever it is who's been talking about me and Cosimo something."

"What's that?" Dorothy grunted over her shoulder.

"You can tell them that they could be present at every one of those dreadful meetings and hear every word we say, if that's the idea. They wouldn't take any harm; in fact, it might take them out of themselves for a bit. And even if it was as they supposed, I don't admit that that would be as important as they seem to think. An altogether false importance is given to these things, Dorothy. My friendship with Cosimo wouldn't be one bit less beautiful whatever the 'conclusions' were people drew. Nor one bit more. I'm not a pretender, Dorothy. I don't pretend to be any wiser than I am. But I do think I'm rational. I--object--most--strongly" (she gave each word its special emphasis) "to this really secondary matter of sex being made a thing of the first importance. I hope that's all going to be changed before very long, and that more enlightened views will take its place. And, really, the brave women of the Movement are the very last people who ought to be talked about in that way. They haven't time for such things. They've far, far too much to do. I know some are married, but they have the true conception of marriage; it's the rational conception, not mere legalized tyranny on the one hand and submission on the other. So though we don't admit that what's commonly called virtue has anything to do with it one way or the other, we give you the virtue in as a sort of present. I think I shall have to lend you John Stuart Mill, Dorothy; he'd clear your ideas on the subject. I'll lend you _Subjection_. It's all in there, art and everything. If you read only a quarter of an hour every night you'll soon feel the benefit. Do read him.... And now I must go. I'm sorry if our talk has seemed a bit of a wrangle, but I have to state these things fearlessly, you see. At whatever cost we have to avoid false positions. The world really doesn't matter _that_ so long as we have the Right on our side. Do try to see it, Dorothy.--Good-bye."

She touched Dorothy's hand and turned away to the door; but, for all her serenity, one thought and one thought only occupied her as she plunged into Hallowells' labyrinth again and wandered through rooms and corridors in search of the way out. The more she thought of it the less it bore thinking of. It was the thought that Dorothy had to all intents and purposes told her that she allowed Cosimo to admire her and to help her to take down her glorious hair for the same reason that Dorothy sat on a box eating sandwiches with her own unenlightened young man, and that when young men came into the question there was not a pin to choose between them after all.

"Poor, dear, dull old thing!" she muttered as she left Hallowells'. "And it's she who pretends, for she'd have given anything to have heard me coming. All the same, if it _had_ been me and Cosimo...."

It would have been irrational, but she supposed she would have resented an intrusion too. Inherited prejudice is very strong....