"There's nothing to tell. Men are rotters, that's all. If I thought I could pay them out by being a suffragette, I'd be a suffragette."
Jenny spoke with decision, pointing the avowal by flinging her cigarette into the grate.
"Yes, I know that's a reason with some. But I don't think that revenge is the best of reasons, somehow. I would rather you were convinced that the movement is right."
"If it annoys men, it must be right," Jenny argued. "Only I don't think it does. I think they just laugh."
"I see you're in a turbulent state of mind," Miss Ragstead observed. "And I'm glad in a way, because it proves that you have temperament and character. You ought to resent a wrong. Of course, I know you'll disagree with me when I tell you that you're too young to be permanently injured by any man—and, I think I might add, too proud."
"Yes, I am most shocking proud," Jenny admitted, looking down on the floor and, as it were, regarding her character incarnate before her.
"But it's just these problems of behavior under difficulties that our club wants to solve. I'd like to put you on the road to express yourself and your ambitions without the necessity of—say marriage for convenience. You're a dancer, aren't you?"
"Um, a ballet girl," said Jenny as usual, careful not to presume the false grandeur of an isolated stellar existence.
"Are you keen on your dancing?"
"I was once. When I began. Only they crush you at the Orient. Girls there hate to see you get on. I'm sick of it."