'I can see he's changed.' 'And you're unchanged--is that it?' 'I'm changed even more than he.' Lady John sat down, with pity and annoyance struggling for the mastery. 'You care about him still?' 'No.' 'No? And yet you--I see! There are obviously certain things he can give his wife, and you naturally want to marry somebody.' 'Oh, Lady John,' said Vida, wearily, 'there are no men listening.' 'No'--she looked round surprised--'I didn't suppose there were.' 'Then why keep up that old pretence?' 'What pret----' 'That to marry _at all costs_ is every woman's dearest ambition till the grave closes over her. You and I _know_ it isn't true.' 'Well, but----' Her ladyship blinked, suddenly seeing daylight. 'Oh! It was just the unexpected sight of him bringing it all back! _That_ was what fired you this afternoon. Of course'--she made an honest attempt at sympathetic understanding--'the memory of a thing like that can never die--can never even be dimmed for the woman.' 'I mean her to think so.' 'Jean?' Vida nodded. 'But it isn't so?' Lady John was a little bewildered. 'You don't seriously believe,' said Vida, 'that a woman, with anything else to think about, comes to the end of ten years still absorbed in a memory of that sort?' Lady John stared speechless a moment. 'You've got over it, then?' 'If it weren't for the papers, I shouldn't remember twice a year there was ever such a person as Geoffrey Stonor in the world.' 'Oh, I'm _so_ glad!' said Lady John, with unconscious rapture. Vida smiled grimly. 'Yes, I'm glad, too.' 'And if Geoffrey Stonor offered you--er--"reparation," you'd refuse it?' 'Geoffrey Stonor! For me he's simply one of the far back links in a chain of evidence. It's certain I think a hundred times of other women's present unhappiness to once that I remember that old unhappiness of mine that's past. I think of the nail and chain makers of Cradley Heath, the sweated girls of the slums; I think,' her voice fell, 'of the army of ill-used women, whose very existence I mustn't mention----' Lady John interrupted her hurriedly. 'Then why in heaven's name do you let poor Jean imagine----' Vida suddenly bent forward. 'Look--I'll trust you, Lady John. I don't suffer from that old wrong as Jean thinks I do, but I shall coin her sympathy into gold for a greater cause than mine.' 'I don't understand you.' 'Jean isn't old enough to be able to care as much about a principle as about a person. But if my old half-forgotten pain can turn her generosity into the common treasury----' 'What do you propose she shall do, poor child?' 'Use her hold over Geoffrey Stonor to make him help us.' 'To help you?' 'The man who served one woman--God knows how many more--very ill, shall serve hundreds of thousands well. Geoffrey Stonor shall make it harder for his son, harder still for his grandson, to treat any woman as he treated me.' 'How will he do that?' said the lady coldly. 'By putting an end to the helplessness of women.'