It was true that Mary's reading had been rather limited to such works
as she needed to know for the sake of examinations; and her time for
reading in London was very little. For some reason, no one likes to be
told that they do not read enough poetry, but her resentment was only
visible in the way she changed the position of her hands, and in the
fixed look in her eyes. And then she thought to herself, "I'm behaving
exactly as I said I wouldn't behave," whereupon she relaxed all her
muscles and said, in her reasonable way:

"Tell me what I ought to read, then."

Ralph had unconsciously been irritated by Mary, and he now delivered
himself of a few names of great poets which were the text for a
discourse upon the imperfection of Mary's character and way of life.

"You live with your inferiors," he said, warming unreasonably, as he
knew, to his text. "And you get into a groove because, on the whole,
it's rather a pleasant groove. And you tend to forget what you're
there for. You've the feminine habit of making much of details. You
don't see when things matter and when they don't. And that's what's
the ruin of all these organizations. That's why the Suffragists have
never done anything all these years. What's the point of drawing-room
meetings and bazaars? You want to have ideas, Mary; get hold of
something big; never mind making mistakes, but don't niggle. Why don't
you throw it all up for a year, and travel?--see something of the
world. Don't be content to live with half a dozen people in a
backwater all your life. But you won't," he concluded.

"I've rather come to that way of thinking myself--about myself, I