"If she gets into prison, and hunger-strikes, she'll injure herself! She's extraordinarily run down with this business of Weston's. I don't believe she could stand the sheer excitement of what she proposes to do." "She's told you?" "Quite enough. If she once goes up to town--if she once gets into that woman's clutches, no one can tell what will happen. Oh, you women--you women!" And the doctor walked tigerishly up and down the room. "That some of the cleverest and wisest of you can stoop to dabbling in a business like this! Upon my word it's an eye-opener!--it pulls one up. And you think you can drive men by such antics! The more you smash and burn, the more firmly goes down the male foot--yes, and the female too!" And the doctor, with a glare, and a male foot as firm as he could make it, came to a stop beside Lady Tonbridge--who looked at him coolly. "Excellent!--but no concern of mine. I'm not a militant. I want the vote just as much as Delia does!" said Lady Tonbridge, firmly. "Don't forget that." "No, you don't--you don't! Excuse me. You are a reasonable woman." "Half the reasonable women in England want the vote. Why shouldn't I have a vote--as well as you?" "Because, my dear lady--" the doctor smote the table with his hand for emphasis--"because the parliamentary vote means the government _of men by men_--without which we go to pieces. And you propose now to make it include the government of men by women--which is absurd!--and if you try it, will only break up the only real government that exists, or can exist!" "Oh!--'physical force,'" said Madeleine, contemptuously, with her nose in the air. "Well--did I--did you--make the physical difference between men and women? Can we unmake it?" "We are governed by discussion--not by force." "Are we? Look at South Africa--look at Ulster--look at the labour troubles that have been, and are to be. And then you women come along with your claim to the vote! What are you doing but breaking up all the social values--weakening all the foundations of the social edifice! Woe!--to you women especially--when you teach men to despise the vote--when men come to know that behind the paper currency of a vote which may be a man's or a woman's, there is nothing but an opinion--bad or good! At present, I tell you, the great conventions of democracy hold because there is reality of bone and muscle behind them! Break down that reality--and sooner or later we come back to force again--through bloodshed and anarchy!" "Inevitable--all the same!" cried Madeleine. "Why did you ever let us taste education?--if you are to deny us for ever political equality?"