ns and character].

PRAED. When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each
other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied
out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly
reserve! gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no when you meant yes!
simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.

VIVIE. Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time.
Especially women's time.

PRAED. Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving.
Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting
you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing
unheard of in my day. It was perfectly splendid, your tieing with the
third wrangler. Just the right place, you know. The first wrangler
is always a dreamy, morbid fellow, in whom the thing is pushed to the
length of a disease.

VIVIE. It doesn't pay. I wouldn't do it again for the same money.

PRAED [aghast] The same money!

VIVIE. Yes. Fifty pounds. Perhaps you don't know how it was. Mrs Latham,
my tutor at Newnham, told my mother that I could distinguish myself in
the mathematical tripos if I went in for it in earnest. The papers were
full just then of Phillipa Summers beating the senior wrangler. You
remember about it, of course.

PRAED [shakes his head energetically] !!!

VIVIE. Well, anyhow, she did; and nothing would please my mother but
that I should do the same thing. I said flatly that it was not worth
my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I
offered to try for fourth wrangler or thereabouts for fifty pounds. She
closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than
my bargain. But I wouldn't do it again for that. Two hundred pounds would
have been nearer the mark.

PRAED [much damped] Lord bless me! Thats a very practical way of looking
at it.

VIVIE. Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?

PRAED. But surely it's practical to consider not only the work these
honors cost, but also the culture they bring.

VIVIE. Culture! My dear Mr Praed: do you know what the mathematical
tripos means? It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day
at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics.

I'm supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except
the mathematics it involves. I can make calculations for engineers,
electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to
nothing a