"Well, you'll never get any good of it." The mother's pale cheek flushed. It excited her to have this chance of speaking her mind to her clever and notorious daughter, whom in many ways she secretly envied, while heartily disapproving her acts and opinions. Gertrude shrugged her shoulders. "What's the good of arguing?" "Well, it's true"--said the mother, persisting. "Every new thing you do, turns more people against you. Winnie's a Suffragist--but she says you've spoilt all their game!" Gertrude's eyes shone; she despised her mother's opinion, and her sister's still more, and yet once again in their neighbourhood, once again in the old environment, she could not help treating them in the old defiant brow-beating way. "And you think, I suppose, that Winnie knows a good deal about it?" "Well, she knows what everybody's saying--in the trams--and the trains everywhere. Hundreds of them that used to be for you have turned over." "Let them!" The contemptuous tone irritated Mrs. Marvell. But at the same time she could not help admiring her eldest daughter, as she sat there in the fire-light, her quiet well-cut dress, her delicate hands and feet. It was true indeed, she was a scarce-crow for thinness, and looked years older--"somehow gone to pieces"--thought the mother, vaguely, and with a queer, sudden pang. "And you're going on with it?" "What? Militancy? Of course we are--more than ever!" "Why, the men laugh at you, Gertrude!" "They won't laugh--by the time we've done," said Gertrude, with apparent indifference. Her mother had not sufficient subtlety of perception to see that the indifference was now assumed, to hide the quiver of nerves, irreparably injured by excitement and overstrain. "Well, all I know is, it's against nature to suppose that women can fight men." Mrs. Marvell's remarks were rather like the emergence of scattered spars from a choppy sea. "We shall fight them," said Gertrude, sourly--"And what's more, we shall beat them." "All the same we've got to live with them!" cried her mother, suddenly flushing, as old memories swept across her. "Yes,--on our terms--not theirs!" "I do believe, Gertrude, you hate the very sight of a man!" Gertrude smiled again; then suddenly shivered, as though the cold wind outside had swept through the room. "And so would you--if you knew what I do!" "Well I do know a good bit!" protested Mrs. Marvell. "And I'm a married woman,--worse luck! and you're not. But you'll never see it any other way than your own, Gertie. You got a kink in you when you were quite a girl. Last week I was talking about you to a woman I know--and I said--'It's the girls ruined by the bad men that make Gertrude so mad'--and she said--'She don't ever think of the boys that are ruined by the bad women!--Has she ever had a son--not she!' And she just cried and cried. I suppose she was thinking of something." Gertrude rose. "Look here, mother. Can I go to bed? I'm awfully tired." "Wait a bit. I'll make the bed."