'I DON'T approve and I don't disapprove,' snarled Farwell. 'I'm not my sister's keeper. I don't pretend to think it noble of you to live with a man you don't care for, but I don't say you're wrong to do it.' 'But really,' said Victoria, 'if you don't think it right to do a thing, you must think it wrong.' 'Not at all. I am neutral, or rather my reason supports what my principles reject. Thus my principles may seem unreasonable and my reasoning devoid of principle, but I cannot help that.' Victoria thought for a moment. She was about to take a great step and she longed for approval. 'Mr Farwell,' she said deliberately, 'I've come to the conclusion that you are right. We are crabs in a bucket and those at the bottom are no nobler than those on the top, for they would gladly be on the top. I'm going on the top.' 'Sophist,' said Farwell smiling. 'I don't know what that means,' Victoria went on; 'I suppose you think that I'm trying to cheat myself as to what is right. Possibly, but I don't profess to know what is right.' 'Oh, no more do I,' interrupted Farwell, 'please don't set me up as a judge. I haven't got any ethical standards for you. I don't believe there are any; the ethics of the Renaissance are not those of the twentieth century, nor are those of London the same as those of Constantinople. Time and space work moral revolutions; and, even on stereotyped lines, nobody can say present ethics are the best. From a conventional point of view the hundred and fifty years that separate us from Fielding mark an improvement, but I have still to learn that the morals of to-day compare favourably with those of Sparta. You must decide that for yourself.' 'I am doing so,' said Victoria quietly, 'but I don't think you quite understand a woman's position and I want you to. I find a world where the harder a woman works, the worse she is paid, where her mind is despised and her body courted. Oh, I know, you haven't done that, but you don't employ women. Nobody but you has ever cared a scrap about such brains as I may have; the subs courted me in my husband's regiment. . . .' She stopped abruptly, having spoken too freely. 'Go on,' said Farwell tactfully. 'And in London what have I found? Nothing but men bent on one pursuit. They have followed me in the streets and tubes, tried to sit by me in the parks. They have tried to touch me--yes me! the dependent who could not resent it, when I served them with their food. Their talk is the inane, under which they cloak desire. Their words are covert appeals. I hear round me the everlasting cry: yield, yield, for that is all we want from young women.' 'True,' said Farwell, 'I have never denied this.'