'Plenty o' feathers on the one I heard.'
'Yes, but not fine feathers. A man judges of the general effect. We can, at a pinch, see past unbecoming clothes, can't we, Lady Whyteleafe? We see what women could make of themselves if they took the trouble.'
'All the same,' said the lady appealed to, 'it's odd they don't see how much better policy it would be if they did take a little trouble about their looks. Now, if we got our maids to do those women's hair for them—if we lent them our French hats—ah, then'—Lady Whyteleafe nodded till the pear-shaped pearls in her ears swung out like milk-white bells ringing an alarum—'they'd convert you creatures fast enough then.'
'Perhaps "convert" is hardly the word,' said Vida, with ironic mouth. As though on an impulse, she bent forward to say, with her lips near Lady Whyteleafe's pearl drop: 'What if it's the aim of the movement to get away from the need of just these little dodges?'
'Dodges?'
But without the exclamation, Miss Levering must have seen that she had been speaking in an unknown tongue. A world where beauty exists for beauty's sake—which is love's sake—and not for tricking money or power out of men, even the possibility of such a world is beyond the imagining of many.
Something was said about a deputation of women who had waited on Mr. Greatorex.
'Hm, yes, yes.' He fiddled with his watch chain.
As though she had just recalled the circumstances, 'Oh, yes,' Vida said, 'I remember I thought at the time, in my modest way, it was nothing short of heroic of them to go asking audience of their arch opponent.'
'It didn't come off!' He wagged his strange head.