'Oh, yes.' Victoria was rather struck by the argument. 'Then,' she said, 'you admit men are superior to women?' 'Well, yes, at any rate at present,' said the suffragist rather sulkily. 'But you must remember that men have had nearly eighty years training in political affairs. That's why we want the vote; to wake women up. Oh, you have no idea what it will mean when we get it. We shall have fresh minds bearing on political problems, we shall have more adequate protection for women and children, compulsory feeding, endowment of mothers, more education, shorter hours, more sanitary inspection. We shall not be enslaved by parties; a nobler influence, the influence of pure women will breathe an atmosphere of virtue into this terrible world.' The woman's eyes were rapt now, her hands tightly clenched, her lips parted, her cheeks a little flushed. But Victoria's face had hardened suddenly. 'Miss Welkin,' she said quietly, 'has anything struck you about this house, about me?' The suffragist looked at her uneasily. 'You ought to know whom you are talking to,' Victoria went on, 'I am a . . . I am a what you would probably call . . . well, not respectable.' A dull red flush spread over Miss Welkin's face, from the line of her tightly pulled hair to her stiff white collar; even her ears went red. She looked away into a corner. 'You see,' said Victoria, 'it's a shock, isn't it? I ought not to have let you in. It wasn't quite fair, was it?' 'Oh, it isn't that, Mrs Ferris,' burst out the suffragist, 'I'm not thinking of myself. . . .' 'Excuse me, you must. You can't help it. If you could construct a scale with the maximum of egotism at one end, and the maximum of altruism at the other and divide it, say into one hundred degrees, you would not, I think, place your noblest thinkers more than a degree or two beyond the egotistic zero. Now you, a pure girl, have been entrapped into the house of a woman of no reputation, whom you would not have in your drawing-room. Now, would you?' Miss Welkin was silent for a moment; the flush was dying away as she gazed round eyed at this beautiful woman lying in her piled cushions, talking like a mathematician. 'I haven't come here to ask you into my drawing-room,' she answered. 'I have come to ask you to throw in your labour, your time, your money, with ours in the service of our cause.' She held her head higher as the thought rose in her like wine. 'Our cause,' she continued, 'is not the cause of rich women or poor women, of good women or bad; it's the cause of woman. Thus, it doesn't matter who she is, so long as there is a woman who stands aloof from us there is still work to do.' Victoria looked at her interestedly. Her eyes were shining, her lips parted in ecstasy. 'Oh, I know what you think,' the suffragist went on; 'as you say, you think I despise you because you . . . you. . . .' The flush returned slightly. . . . 'But I know that yours is not a happy life and we are bringing the light.'