lace is a shrine. Still, that leaves over a million
shrines short, not reckoning widows who re-marry. And more boys die than
girls, so that the real disproportion among adults is even greater."
"I know," said Mr Manning, "I know these Dreadful Statistics. I know
there's a sort of right in your impatience at the slowness of Progress.
But tell me one thing I don't understand--tell me one thing: How can you
help it by coming down into the battle and the mire? That's the thing
that concerns me."
"Oh, I'm not trying to help it," said Ann Veronica. "I'm only arguing
against your position of what a woman should be, and trying to get
it clear in my own mind. I'm in this apartment and looking for work
because--Well, what else can I do, when my father practically locks me
up?"
"I know," said Mr. Manning, "I know. Don't think I can't sympathize and
understand. Still, here we are in this dingy, foggy city. Ye gods! what
a wilderness it is! Every one trying to get the better of every one,
every one regardless of every one--it's one of those days when every one
bumps against you--every one pouring coal smoke into the air and making
confusion worse confounded, motor omnibuses clattering and smelling,
a horse down in the Tottenham Court Road, an old woman at the corner
coughing dreadfully--all the painful sights of a great city, and here
you come into it to take your chances. It's too valiant, Miss Stanley,
too valiant altogether!"
Ann Veronica meditated. She had had two days of employment-seeking now.
"I wonder if it is."
"It isn't," said Mr. Manning, "that I mind Courage in a Woman--I love
and admire Courage. What could be more splendid than a beautiful girl
facing a great, glorious tiger? Una and the Lion again, and all that!
But this isn't that sort of thing; this is just a great, ugly, endless
wilderness of selfish, sweating, vulgar competition!"
"That you want to keep me out of?"
"Exactly!" said Mr. Manning.
"In a sort of beautiful garden-close--wearing lovely dresses and picking
beautiful flowers?"
"Ah! If one could!"
"While those other girls trudge to business and those other women let
lodgings. And in reality even that magic garden-close resolves itself
into a villa at Morningside Park and my father being more and more
cross and overbearing at meals--and a general feeling of insecurity and
futility."
Mr. Manning relinquished his cup, and looked meaningly at Ann Veronica.
"There," he said, "you don't t
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