“Because I am too busy. Because there is a superfluity of women, and as I am not a real woman—only an idea—I’d better sit out. Because I am conceited and couldn’t bear my pride to have a fall—at your expense. Because you don’t know me and I don’t know you. Because it’s better to live alone with an ideal than coupled with a fact. Now I’m sick of talking about myself, it makes me feel sugary, as though I’d been swallowing golden syrup neat.” “But before you retire into your militancy, tell me,” said the gardener, “do you think you will ever recognise this bond between us?” “There is no bond between us.” “There is love between us.” “I’m sorry, but it’s not mutual.” “Love is an automatically mutual thing.” “Then I’m afraid that proves that whatever may be between us is not love. Here is Park View.” “Damn Park View!” Words are supposed to be a woman’s luxury, but it always seems to me that men put a more touching faith in argument than ever women did. I believe the gardener thought that if Park View had been five miles farther on, he might have made a woman of the suffragette. “And what do you expect me to do now?” he asked pathetically. “Get busy,” advised the suffragette, “somewhere else. Dear little gardener, remember that this road has been trodden before. Being young is a devastating time, anyway. It always comforts me to think that there are crowds before and behind me, and that even a cow has had a delirious calfhood. After all, the past is such a little thing, one can drown it in a drop. And the future is so big.” “That’s what I complain of—the size of the future.” “Oh, no, don’t. Size is space and space is growth. Good gracious, what a prig I am becoming!” “For God’s sake, come and fill up a little corner of my big future, then. You little thing, I could hold you in my hand.... And you can hold me with no hand at all, but only with your heart.” “Good-bye.” “But why? Why?” She was climbing the steep drive. She never looked round. She always looked up.