“Splendid! I'm so glad,” she responded. “You see, with our men it's usually the other way round. My ideas were a great handicap at home.”
“So you decided to leave?”
“Yes; I went to London and got a job teaching some children sums and history—two hours every morning. In the afternoons I worked at stories for the magazines, and placed a few, but they pay an unknown writer horribly badly. I lived with an old lady as companion for two months, but that was being a poor relation minus the relationship—I couldn't stand it. I joined the Suffragists in London—not the Militants—I don't quite see their point of view—and marched in a parade. Brother-in-law heard of it, and wrote me I could not expect anything from them unless I stopped it.” She laughed quietly.
Stefan flushed. He pronounced something—conclusively—in French. Then—“Don't ask me to apologize, Miss Elliston.”
“I won't,” reassuringly. “I felt rather like that, too. I wrote that I didn't expect anything as it was. Then I sat down and thought about the whole question of women in England and their chances. I had a hundred pounds and a few ornaments of Mother's. I love children, but I didn't want to be a governess. I wanted to stand alone in some place where my head wouldn't be pushed down every time I tried to raise it. I believed in America people wouldn't say so often, 'Why doesn't a nice girl like you get married?' so I came, and here I am. That's the whole story—a very humdrum one.”
“Yes, here you are, thank God!” proclaimed Stefan devoutly. “What magnificent pluck, and how divine of you to tell me it all! You've saved me from suicide, almost. These people immolate me.”
“How delightfully he exaggerates!” she thought.
“What thousands of things we can talk about,” he went on in a burst of enthusiasm. “What a perfectly splendid time we are going to have!” He all but warbled.
“I hope so,” she answered, smilingly, “but there goes the gong, and I'm ravenous.”
“Dinner!” he cried scornfully; “suet pudding, all those horrible people—you want to leave this—?” He swept his arm over the glittering water.