this time. I shall do a little teaching, and perhaps a little writing:
not much--you need not be vexed. I shall not try to pick up the other
threads yet. I shall not be political, nor educational, nor anything
else great."
"If you call politics or education great," he said. "And heaven defend
me from political or highly educated women!"
"You say that because you know nothing about them," she said sharply.
"Thank you," he replied. "I have met them quite often enough!"
"That was probably some time ago," she said rather heartlessly. "If you
have lived here so long, how can you judge of the changes which go on
in the world outside Petershof?"
"If I have lived here so long," he repeated, in the bitterness of his
heart.
Bernardine did not notice: she was on a subject which always excited her.
"I don't know so much about the political women," she said, "but I do
know about the higher education people. The writers who rail against
the women of this date are really describing the women of ten years ago.
Why, the Girton girl of ten years ago seems a different creation from
the Girton girl of to-day. Yet the latter has been the steady outgrowth
of the former!"
"And the difference between them?" asked the Disagreeable Man; "since
you pride yourself on being so well informed."
"The Girton girl of ten years ago," said Bernardine, "was a, sombre,
spectacled person, carelessly and dowdily dressed, who gave herself up
to wisdom, and despised every one who did not know the Agamemnon by
heart. She was probably not lovable; but she deserves to be honoured
and thankfully remembered. She fought for woman's right to be well
educated, and I cannot bear to hear her slighted. The fresh-hearted
young girl who nowadays plays a good game of tennis, and takes a high
place in the Classical or Mathematical Tripos, and is book learned,
without being bookish, and . . ."
"What other virtues are left, I wonder?" he interrupted.
"And who does not scorn to take a pride in her looks because she happens
to take a pride in her books," continued Bernardine, looking at the
|