But it was impossible for Alwynne to be silent long, and by the time they had adjourned to the drawing-room, the pair were talking easily enough. Roger did not find himself bored. He had, from the beginning, recognised that she was no fool, that her remarks owed their comicality to her phrasing of them, and that essentially they were shrewd, her acrobatic intellect swinging easily across the gaps in her education. The gaps were certainly there. He would marvel at her amazing ignorance, only to be tripped up by her unexpected display of authoritative knowledge. Gradually he began to analyse and discriminate, to see that she was naturally observant. Her remarks on life as she knew it, were as illuminating as original. She had humour and a nice sense of caricature. But when she, as it were, hoisted herself on the shoulders of the women about her, and from that level peered curiously at an outer, alien world, her insight failed her, her views grew distorted and merely grotesque. He thought he guessed the reason. She was no longer gazing, critical and clear-eyed, at known surroundings, but, still supported by the opinions of the women of her circle, was seeing what she had expected to see, what she had been told by them that she would see. For all her air of modern girl, her independence, her store of book experience, she was comically conventual in her curiosities and intolerances, in her prim company manners and uncontrollable lapses into unconventionality. She had an air of not being at her ease; yet he guessed that it was merely the unaccustomed environment that disturbed her poise. He could see her handling surely enough a crowd of schoolgirls. He was equally certain that she ruled through sheer, easy popularity. She had dignity in spite of her whimsies, but he could not imagine her intimidating even a schoolgirl. But most of all her attitude to himself amused him. She had a certain veiled antagonism of manner, that was allied to the antagonism of the small child to any innovation. She talked to him readily enough (and he, for that matter, to her) yet she was always on the defensive, inquisitive yet wary. He felt that if she had been ten years younger, she would have circled about him and poked. A stray phrase explained her to him. They had discussed the latest raid. At Alwynne's age and period all conversational roads led to the suffrage question, and he had found her re-hash of Mona Hamilton's arguments sufficiently entertaining. He guessed a plagiarism of the matter, but the manner was obviously her own. She was full of second-hand indignation over the conduct of a certain Cabinet Minister. "He won't even see them!" she explained grievously. "Not even a deputation from the constitutional section! Just because some women are fools--and burn things----" The pause was eloquent. "It's so utterly unreasonable," declaimed Alwynne. "But of course men are unreasonable," said Alwynne, pensively reflective. "Are they?"