"So I do." Jill sat tight. "But I won't be swept off my feet by ... a sort of hypnotism of Sex! I want to keep an unprejudiced eye. _Of course_ I'd like to see women take a leading place everywhere. But if they make a mess of it, we're worse off than we were before. We stand to lose as well as gain by rushing into public life." She threw back a lock of hair that had fallen forward, blinding her. "Now, look here, Stephen, we've got a lot ... I'm not talking of influence and the right to expect chivalry--which by the way I think we're losing, through the tactics of the Militants! You've only to stand in a Suffrage crowd and listen to some of the remarks. Why, fifty ... a hundred years ago ... a decent man would have taken umbrage. Men were run through in those days for far less said of their sisters or wives! But--to go back---we've got _some_ pull. To begin with, men, when they marry, keep us! I dare say I'm old-fashioned. Yes--of course! I knew you'd laugh!--but it's big, really. It means a home--and protection--and a fair chance for ... bringing up a family." She flushed slightly under his smile, but went on bravely with her argument. "It seems to me that by and by we'll have to work, share and share alike, ill or well, on equal terms. And what's to become of our home life--and--well ... the next generation?" Stephen saw his chance at last. "Are you thinking of marriage yourself, Jill? You seem to arrange for _all_ possibilities..." His greenish eyes were insolent under their long fair lashes. "Oh!" She sprang up. "Oh! you _beast_...!" But she faced him still, breathless, white. "At any rate, if I did, I'd live in my _own_ house!" she cried. CHAPTER XI McTaggart drew his chair forward from behind the curtain of the box and gazed out on the crowded Hippodrome. Not a seat was vacant. For to-night a famous composer was conducting his masterpiece with a picked company brought over for a fleeting visit to England. As he watched, the lights were lowered in the body of the hall and the beautiful overture began, stealing like a spirit of sun-lit shores across the artificially warm atmosphere. The curtain rolled up to disclose a narrowed stage and the cheap, garish scenery that seems a necessary adjunct to the opera in Italy. McTaggart's eyes took it in with a careless glance, and returned to the other occupant of the box. To-night Fantine seemed to acquire a new personality. An air faintly tragic and dignified hung over the pale face, and even her dress enhanced the suggestion, with that subtle link that lies between a Parisian and her clothes. She wore a long cloak of velvet brocade: dull wine-coloured flowers on an oyster ground, relieved by a border of silver fox and the faint gleam of metallic threads running through the material.