Trafford glanced doorward, but before he could move another speaker was in possession of the room. This was a very young, tall, fair, round-shouldered girl who held herself with an unnatural rigidity, fixed her eyes on the floor just in front of the chairwoman, and spoke with knitted brows and an effect of extreme strain. She remarked that some people did not approve of this proposed boycott of the census. She hung silent for a moment, as if ransacking her mind for something mislaid, and then proceeded to remark that she proposed to occupy a few moments in answering that objection--if it could be called an objection. They said that spoiling the census was an illegitimate extension of the woman movement. Well, she objected--she objected fiercely--to every word of that phrase. Nothing was an illegitimate extension of the woman movement. Nothing could be. (Applause.) That was the very principle they had been fighting for all along. So that, examined in this way, this so-called objection resolved itself into a mere question begging phrase. Nothing more. And her reply therefore to those who made it was that they were begging the question, and however well that might do for men, it would certainly not do, they would find, for women. (Applause.) For the freshly awakened consciousness of women. (Further applause.) This was a war in which quarter was neither asked nor given; if it were not so things might be different. She remained silent after that for the space of twenty seconds perhaps, and then remarked that that seemed to be all she had to say, and sat down amidst loud encouragement. Then with a certain dismay Trafford saw his wife upon her feet. He was afraid of the effect upon himself of what she was going to say, but he need have had no reason for his fear. Marjorie was a seasoned debater, self-possessed, with a voice very well controlled and a complete mastery of that elaborate appearance of reasonableness which is so essential to good public speaking. She could speak far better than she could talk. And she startled the meeting in her opening sentence by declaring that she meant to stay at home on the census night, and supply her husband with every scrap of information he hadn't got already that might be needed to make the return an entirely perfect return. (Marked absence of applause.)