had much to do
with them. However, I must retract some of the things that I have
said against them. If they were properly educated I don't see why they
shouldn't be much the same as men--as satisfactory I mean; though, of
course, very different. The question is, how should one educate
them. The present method seems to me abominable. This girl, though
twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I
explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon
other matters as important" (here Mrs. Ambrose's letter may not be
quoted) . . . "was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but
criminal to bring people up like that. Let alone the suffering to them,
it explains why women are what they are--the wonder is they're no worse.
I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a
good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a
reasonable human being. Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its
own object, and when they begin to understand they take it all much too
seriously. My brother-in-law really deserved a catastrophe--which he
won't get. I now pray for a young man to come to my help; some one, I
mean, who would talk to her openly, and prove how absurd most of her
ideas about life are. Unluckily such men seem almost as rare as the
women. The English colony certainly doesn't provide one; artists,
merchants, cultivated people--they are stupid, conventional, and
flirtatious. . . ." She ceased, and with her pen in her hand sat looking
into the fire, making the logs into caves and mountains, for it had
grown too dark to go on writing. Moreover, the house began to stir as
the hour of dinner approached; she could hear the plates being chinked
in the dining-room next door, and Chailey instructing the Spanish girl
where to put things down in vigorous English. The bell rang; she rose,
met Ridley and Rachel outside, and they all went in to dinner.

Three months had made but little difference in the appearance either of
Ridley or Rachel; yet a keen observer might have thought that the girl
was more definite and self-confident in her manner than before. Her skin
was brown, her eyes certainly brighter, and she attended to what was
said as though she might be going to contradict it. The meal began with
the comfortable silence of people who are quite at their ease together.
Then Ridley, leaning on his elbow and looking out of the window,
observed that it was a l