e to work here regularly. I asked her about it the
other day, because if mother gets worse I may be hindered about
coming to the office, and I didn't want you to get overworked,--so I
said to Beryl.... That reminds me, she referred to the coming child
and added that its father was a policeman. Quite a nice creature in
his private life. Of course she's only kidding. I expect it's the
architect all the time. You know how she delighted in shocking us at
Newnham. I wish she hadn't this kink about her. P'raps I'm getting
old-fashioned already--You used to call me 'the Girondist.' But if
the New Woman _is_ to go on the loose and be unmoral like the
rabbits, won't the cause suffer from middle-class opposition?"

_Vivie_: "Perhaps. But it may gain instead the sympathies of the
lower and the upper classes. Why do you bother about Beryl? I agree
with you in disliking all this sexuality..."

_Norie_: "Does one _ever_ quite know why one likes people? There is
_something_ about Beryl that gets over me; and she _is_ a worker.
You know how she grappled with that Norfolk estate business?"

_Vivie_: "Well, it's fortunate she and I have not met since Newnham
days. You must tip her the story that I am going away for a
time--abroad--and that a young--young, because I look a mere boy,
dressed up in men's clothes--a young cousin of mine, learned in the
law, is going to drop in occasionally and do some of the work..."

_Norie_: "I'm afraid I'm rather weak-willed. I _ought_ to stop this
prank before it has gone too far, just as I ought to discourage
Beryl's babies. Your schemes sound so stagey. Off the stage
you never take people in with such flimsy stories and weak
disguises--you'll tie yourself up into knots and finally get sent to
prison.... However.... I can't help being rather tickled by your
idea. It's vilely unjust, men closing two-thirds of the respectable
careers to women, to bachelor women above all..." (A pause, and the
two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured,
straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance
hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)--"Well, go ahead!
Follow your star! I can be confident of one thing, you won't do
anything mean or disgraceful. Deceiving Man while his vile laws and
restrictions remain in force is no crime. Be prudent, so far as
compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because if you
bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave we shall l