There is nothing so annoying as to have one’s really impressive remarks absolutely ignored. I myself can bear a great deal of passing over. You may with advantage fail to see my complexion and the cut of my clothes; you may be unaware of the colour of my eyes without offending me; I do not care if you never take the trouble to depress your eyes to my feet to see if I take twos or sevens; you may despise my works of art—which have no value except in the eyes of my relations; you may refuse to read my writings—which have no value in any eyes but my own,—all these things you may do and still retain my respect, but when I speak you must listen to what I say. If you don’t, I hate you. The gardener felt like this, and the retreating form of the suffragette became hateful to him. Somehow delightfully hateful. “Come back,” he shouted, but incredible though it may seem, the woman shrugged one shoulder at him, and walked on towards the Red Place. It was most undignified, the gardener had to run after her to enforce his will. He arrived by her side breathless, with his face the colour of a slightly anæmic beetroot. It is very wrong of women to place their superiors in such unsuperior positions. I hope I do not strike you as indulging my suffragettism at the expense of the gardener. I am very fond of him myself, and because that is so, his conceit seems to me to be one of his principal charms. There is something immorally attractive in a baby vice that makes one’s heart smile. The gardener closed his hand about the suffragette’s thin arm. “You will force me to take advantage of my privilege,” he said, and looked at his own enormous hand. The suffragette stood perfectly still, looking in the direction she wanted to go. “Turn back,” said the gardener. But she made a sudden passionate effort to twist her arm out of his grasp. It was absurd, and very nearly successful, like several things that women do. The gardener’s heart grew black. There seemed nothing to be done. No end could be imagined to the incident. His blue sea future dissolved. He pictured himself standing thus throughout eternity, with his hand closed around the little splinter of life she called her arm. Time seemed to pass so slowly that in a minute he found he knew her looks by heart. And yet he was not weary of them. I suppose the feeling he found in himself was due to a certain reaction from the exalted incident of the blue and golden young lady who had divined the loneliness of the threepenny bit. For he discovered that he did not so very much mind hair that had but little colour in it, and that he found attractive a pointed chin, and an under lip that was the least trifle more out-thrust than its fellow. “Do you know why I want to stop you?” he said at last. “Yes.” “Why?” “Because you are not a woman, and don’t understand.” “Because I am a man, and I understand.” She was silent. “Do you know what I mean?” “Yes.”