“You are likely to run greater dangers than that if you allow yourself to be drawn into a theatrical circle.” “What sort of dangers?… Oh, my dear, saintly episcopal architect, what foundations of darkness are you building upon now, out of a little old-fashioned, out-of-date prejudice which you might have dug up from some of your studies in antiquity books? There are just as many dangers outside the theatrical world as in it, for the sort of woman dangers are attractive to; and little Sunday-school teachers have come to grief, while famous actresses have won through unscathed.” Dudley’s face expressed both surprise and distaste. “I wonder what you know about it anyway. I think you are talking at random. Certainly no dangers would come near you if you listened to my wishes and settled down quietly at home. If you don’t care about living in Bloomsbury, I will take a small house in the suburbs, and you can amuse yourself with the housekeeping, and tennis, and that sort of thing.” “And when you want to marry?” “I shall not want to marry. I am wedded to my profession.” “O Dudley!… Dudley!…” She slipped off the table where she had been jauntily seated, and came and stood beside him, passing her arm through his. “Can’t you see I’d just die of a little house in the suburbs, looking after the housekeeping: it’s the most dreadful and awful thing on the face of the earth. I’m not a bit sorry for slaves, and prisoners, and shipwrecked sailors, and East-end starvelings; every bit of sympathy I’ve got is used up for the girls who’ve got to stay in hundrum homes, and be nothing, and do nothing, but just finished young ladies. Work is the finest thing in the world. It’s just splendid to have something real to do, and be paid for it. Why, they can’t even go to prison, or be hungry, or anything except possible wives for possible men who may or may not happen to want them.” “Of course you are talking arrant nonsense,” Dudley replied frigidly. “I don’t know where in the world you get all your queer ideas. Woman’s sphere is most decidedly the home; you seem to—” but a small hand was clapped vigorously over his mouth, and eyes of feigned horror searching his. “Do you know, I’m half afraid you’ve lived in your musty old books so long, Dudley,” with mock seriousness, “that you’ve lost all count of time. It is about a thousand years since sane and sensible men believed all that drivel about women’s only sphere being the home, and since women were content to be mere chattels, stuck in with the rest of the furniture, to look after the children. Nowadays the jolly, sensible woman that a man likes for wife or pal, is very often a busy worker.” “Let her work busily at home, then!”