"Oh no!--no!" she cried. "How _impossible!_--when one feels oneself so
helpless, so clumsy, so useless. Why couldn't I do better? But perhaps it
is as well. It all prepares one--braces one--against--"

She paused and leaned forward, looking out at the maze of figures and
carriages on the Mansion House crossing, her tight-pressed lips trembling
against her will.

"Against the last inevitable disappointment." That, no doubt, was what
she meant.

"If you only understood how loth some of us are to differ from you," he
cried,--"how hard it seems to have to press another view,--to be
already pledged."

"Oh yes!--_please_--I know that you are pledged," she said, in
hasty distress, her delicacy shrinking as before from the direct
personal argument.

They were silent a little. Tressady looked out at the houses in Queen
Victoria Street, at the lamplit summer night, grudging the progress of
the cab, the approach of the river, of the Embankment, where there would
be less traffic to bar their way--clinging to the minutes as they passed.

"Oh! how could they put up that woman?" she said presently, her eyes
still shut, her hand shaking, as it rested on the door. "How _could_
they? It is the thought of women like that--the hundreds and thousands of
them--that goads one on. A clergyman who knows the East End well said to
me the other day, 'The difference between now and twenty years ago is