have to ask my leave first."

"Oh, she'll persuade you!" cried Nora, standing before her father with
her hands behind her. "She'll make us all do what she wants. She'll be
like a cuckoo in the nest. She'll be too strong for us."

Ewen Hooper put out a soothing hand, and patted his youngest daughter
on the shoulder.

"Wait a bit, my dear. And when Connie comes back just ask her to step in
here a moment. And now will you both please be gone--at once?--quick
once?--quick march!"

And taking his wife and daughter by the shoulders, he turned them both
forcibly out, and sat down to make his final preparations for a lecture
that afternoon on the "feminism" of Euripides.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Connie Bledlow and her maid were walking quickly down the
Broad towards the busy Cornmarket with its shops. It was a brilliant
morning--one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the
air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun. Every
outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright
air. The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of
winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the
yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts. The
figures, even, passing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees
and the buildings. The white in the women's dresses; the short black
gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the