“What d’you mean? You’ve said you see eye to eye with me in everything. You’ve never questioned the substance of the lecture.”
“It wasn’t for me to question it. But I don’t agree with a lot of it.”
“Since when?”
“Since first I heard it. I wasn’t brought up to feel everybody’s equal, and I don’t believe they are.”
“I don’t say they are. What I say is—”
“I know what you say, Jordan. It’s no good arguing. You’d hate me if I was false and pretended anything.”
“Where do you disagree then?”
“Oh, I don’t believe in fighting and taking their money from people. I want peace. If you could see what my life is in this storm of doubt and uncertainty, if you could sympathise with a woman in my position who has given up so much, then you’d surely understand that I’ve got no heart for all these theories and ideas at present.”
“You’re getting away from the point,” he said. “I can’t argue with you because you won’t stick to the subject. I do sympathise—all the time—every minute; but my lecture doesn’t belong to our private affairs. It doesn’t alter them, or delay them. I’m going on with that as quick as Dingle will let me. But I want you to come to the lecture. I ask it, and I expect it.”
“You haven’t any right to do that. I don’t ask you to come to church, so you oughtn’t to ask me to come to your lecture. We must be ourselves, and where we don’t agree, we mustn’t be afraid to say so.”