"I don't know so much about the political women," she said, "but I do know about the higher education people. The writers who rail against the women of this date are really describing the women of ten years ago. Why, the Girton girl of ten years ago seems a different creation from the Girton girl of to-day. Yet the latter has been the steady outgrowth of the former!" "And the difference between them?" asked the Disagreeable Man; "since you pride yourself on being so well informed." "The Girton girl of ten years ago," said Bernardine, "was a, sombre, spectacled person, carelessly and dowdily dressed, who gave herself up to wisdom, and despised every one who did not know the Agamemnon by heart. She was probably not lovable; but she deserves to be honoured and thankfully remembered. She fought for woman's right to be well educated, and I cannot bear to hear her slighted. The fresh-hearted young girl who nowadays plays a good game of tennis, and takes a high place in the Classical or Mathematical Tripos, and is book learnèd, without being bookish, and . . . ." "What other virtues are left, I wonder?" he interrupted. "And who does not scorn to take a pride in her looks because she happens to take a pride in her books," continued Bernardine, looking at the Disagreeable Man, and not seeming to see him: "she is what she is by reason of that grave and loveless woman who won the battle for her." Here she paused. "But how ridiculous for me to talk to you in this way!" she said. "It is not likely that you would be interested in the widening out of women's lives." "And pray why not?" he asked. "Have I been on the shelf too long?" "I think you would not have been interested even if you had never been on the shelf," she said frankly. "You are not the type of man to be generous to woman." "May I ask one little question of you, which shall conclude this subject," he said, "since here we are already at the Gasthaus: to which type of learnèd woman do you lay claim to belong?" Bernardine laughed. "That I leave to your own powers of discrimination," she said, and then added, "if you have any." And that was the end of the matter, for the word spread about that Herr Allitsen had arrived, and every one turned out to give the two guests greeting. Frau Steinhart smothered Bernardine with motherly tenderness, and whispered in her ear: "You are betrothed now, liebes Fräulein? Ach, I am sure of it."