"Your whole point of view," she assured Miss Prosser, "is radically wrong. It's an insult to the female sex; it's positively obscene. Your root assumption is simply this: that we're all in a chronic state of sexual excitement; leave us alone for a moment and we'll immediately put our desires into practice. It's disgusting. It makes me blush. After all, Miss Prosser, we are a college of intelligent women, not an asylum of nymphomaniacs." For the first time in her career, Miss Prosser had to admit herself beaten. The authorities gave in--reluctantly and on only a few points; but the principle had been shaken, and that, as Millicent pointed out, was what really mattered. Dick used to see a good deal of his sister while he was still in residence at Canteloup, and after he had gone down he used to come regularly once a fortnight during term to visit her. That horrible mutual reserve, which poisons the social life of most families and which had effectively made of their brotherly and sisterly relation a prolonged discomfort in the past, began to disappear. They became the best of friends. "I like you, Dick, a great deal better than I did," said Millicent one day as they were parting at the gate of St. Mungo's after a long walk together. Dick took off his hat and bowed. "My dear, I reciprocate the sentiment. And, what's more, I esteem and admire you. So there." Millicent curtsied, and they laughed. They both felt very happy. VI "WHAT a life!" said Dick, with a sigh of weariness as the train moved out of Euston. Not a bad life, Millicent thought. "But horribly fatiguing. I am quite outreined by it." "Outreined" was Dick's translation of _éreinté_. He liked using words of his own manufacture; one had to learn his idiom before one could properly appreciate his intimate conversation. Dick had every justification for being outreined. The spring and summer had passed for him in a whirl of incessant activity. He had written three long chapters of the _New Synthetic Philosophy_, and had the material for two more ready in the form of notes. He had helped to organize and bring to its successful conclusion the great carpenters' strike of May and June. He had written four pamphlets and a small army of political articles. And this comprised only half his labour; for nightly, from twelve till two, Pearl Bellairs emerged to compose the masterpieces which supplied Dick with his bread and butter. _Apes in Purple_ had been published in May. Since then she had finished _La Belle Dame sans Morality_, and had embarked on the first chapters of _Daisy's Voyage to Cythera_. Her weekly articles, "For the Girls of Britain," had become, during this period, a regular and favourite feature in the pages of _Hildebrand's Sabbath_, that prince of Sunday papers. At the beginning of July, Dick considered that he had earned a holiday, and now they were off, he and Millicent, for the North.