in for sculpture; and there, whenever he could get away from
Storrington or some such place and from his City office, he used to
visit Beryl. This had been going on for three years. But last
February she had to break it to her mother that she was six months
gone. The other wife knows all about it but refuses to divorce the
naughty architect, and at the same time has cut off supplies--What
_cowards_ men are and how _little_ women stand by women! And then
it's a poor deanery and Beryl has five younger brothers that have
got to be educated. Her sculpture was little more than commissions
executed for her architect's building and I expect that resource
will now disappear ... I half think I shall bring her in here, when
she is well again. She's got a very good head-piece and you know we
are expanding our business ... She'd make a good House Agent ... She
writes sometimes for _Country Life_..."

_Vivie_: "Ye-es.... But you can't provide for many more of our
college-mates. Any more gone wrong?"

_Norie_: "It depends how you qualify 'wrong.' I really don't see
that it is 'wronger' for a young woman to yield to 'storgé' and have
a baby out of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby. Society
doesn't damn the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric;
but it does its best to ruin the woman ... unless she's an actress
or a singer. If a woman likes to go through all the misery of
pregnancy and the pangs of delivery on her own account and without
being legally tied up with a man, why can't she? Beryl, at any rate,
is quite unashamed, and says she shall have as many children as her
earnings support ... that it will be great fun choosing their
sires--more variety in their types.... Is _she_ the New Woman, I
wonder?"