'Oh,' said Borrodaile, with an unconscious arrogance, 'Sophia doesn't wait to be talked to. She takes her own line. Politics are a tradition with our women. I found her reading the parliamentary debates when she was fourteen.' 'And your boys, are they equally----?' He sighed. 'The world has got very topsy-turvy. All my girls are boys--and all my boys are girls.' 'Well, Sophia can take care of the Country Club! I remember how we scoffed when she organized it.' 'It's had precisely the effect I expected. Takes her away from her own home, where she ought to be----' 'Who wants her at home?' Unblushingly he answered, '_I_ do.' 'Why, you're never there yourself.' He blinked. 'When you aren't in your garden you're----' 'Here?' he laughed. 'I don't myself,' she went on, '_I_ don't belong to any clubs----' 'I should hope not, indeed! Where should I go for tea and for news of the workings of the Zeitgeist?' he mocked. 'But I begin to see what women's clubs are for.' 'They're for the dowdy, unattached females to meet and gossip in, to hold feeble little debates in, to listen to pettifogging little lectures, and imagine they're _dans le mouvement_.' 'They are to accustom women to thinking and acting together. While you and I have been laughing at them, they've been building up a huge machinery of organization, ready to the hand of the chief engineer who is to come.' 'Horrible thought!' 'Well, horrible or not, I don't despise clubs any more. They're largely responsible for the new corporate spirit among women.' He pulled himself out of the cavernous comfort of his chair, and stood glooming in front of the screen that hid the fireless grate. 'Clubs, societies, leagues, they're all devices for robbing people of their freedom. It's no use to talk to me. I'm one of the few individualists left in the world. I never wanted in my life to belong to any body.' Her pealing laughter made him explain, smiling, 'To any corporation, was what I meant.' 'No, no. You got it right the first time! The reason that, in spite of my late perversities, you don't cast me off is because I'm one of the few women who don't make claims.' 'It is the claim of the community that I resent. I want to keep clear of all complication. I want to be really free. I could never have pledged myself to any Church or any party.' 'Perhaps'--she smiled at him--'perhaps that's why you are a beautiful and ineffectual angel.'