"Chatter of that sort isn't the beginning of discussion, it's the end. It's the death-rattle. Nobody was meeting the thoughts of any one. I admit Buzard, who's a man, talked the worst rubbish of all. That Primitive Matriarchate of his! So it isn't sex. I've noticed before that the men in this movement of yours are worse than the women. It isn't sex. It's something else. It's a foolishness. It's a sort of irresponsible looseness." He turned on her gravely. "You ought not to get all these people here. It's contagious. Before you know it you'll find your own mind liquefy and become enthusiastic and slop about. You'll begin to talk monomania about Mr. Asquith." "But it's a great movement, Rag, even if incidentally they say and do silly things!" "My dear! aren't I feminist? Don't I want women fine and sane and responsible? Don't I want them to have education, to handle things, to vote like men and bear themselves with the gravity of men? And these meetings--all hat and flutter! These displays of weak, untrained, hysterical vehemence! These gatherings of open-mouthed impressionable young girls to be trained in incoherence! You can't go on with it!" Marjorie regarded him quietly for a moment. "I must go on with something," she said. "Well, not this." "Then _what?_" "Something sane." "Tell me what." "It must come out of yourself." Marjorie thought sullenly for a moment. "Nothing comes out of myself," she said. "I don't think you realize a bit what my life has become," she went on; "how much I'm like some one who's been put in a pleasant, high-class prison." "This house! It's your own!" "It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation in the day. It's all very well to say I might do more in it. I can't--without absurdity. Or expenditure. I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I can't make jam or do ornamental needlework. The shops do it better and cheaper, and I haven't been trained to it. I've been trained _not_ to do it. I've been brought up on games and school-books, and fed on mixed ideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself with a needle as women used to do. Besides, I not only detest doing needlework but I hate it--the sort of thing a woman of my kind does anyhow--when it's done. I'm no artist. I'm not sufficiently interested in outside things to spend my time in serious systematic reading, and after four or five novels--oh, these meetings are better than that! You see, you've got a life--too much of it--_I_ haven't got enough. I wish almost I could sleep away half the day. Oh! I want something _real_, Rag; something more than I've got." A sudden inspiration came to her. "Will you let me come to your laboratory and work with you?" She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own chance question and pointed it at him, a vitally important challenge. "Will you let me come to your laboratory and work?" she repeated. Trafford thought. "No," he said. "Why not?"