"Odd of her, this thirst for culture, isn't it?" said Hubert smilingly to Kenneth Boyd, on one of their rare meetings away from the hostile wives; "but it's quite harmless and it keeps them quiet."
Kenneth Boyd spoke gloomily. "Not always," he said. Perhaps he knew more of Woman, even though he never wrote about her. "Sometimes it has the opposite effect."
"Oh, I know what you mean," Hubert replied, not caring to be patronised; "but Helena is not that sort. She doesn't want the Vote. She's such a charming little innocent," and he laughed, half love but half pity.
"Really?" said the enigmatic Boyd. His thoughts had taken a far ampler sweep, and he spoke almost darkly.
Hubert did not answer. He was still thinking of the Vote. Most men persistently whittle down Woman's whole platform to a mere splinter convenient for smashing.
"Why," he elaborated, "if she were given it, she wouldn't know what she had got to do with it."
CHAPTER VII
THE CULT OF USELESSNESS
Helena certainly had small ambition towards the life political, even as anything no more exalted than a latch-key voter. She had been compelled to read politics in Devonshire but like a schoolboy who is forced to chapel, found it very dull, and took another course at the first opportunity. She could not think, she said, to Hubert's joy, how grown men even took the trouble of electing members who had no influence over their own party and spent most of the time in childishly hindering the other.