'Oh, I can't go into that.' She stood up and tugged at her wrinkled cotton gloves. 'But it's easy for us to see they're sexless.' She seemed to resent the unbelief in the opposite face. 'Lady Caterham sent for me the other day. You may have heard of Lady Caterham.'
Miss Levering suppressed the fact of how much, by a vague-sounding—
'Y—yes.'
'Well, she sent for me to—— Oh, I suppose she was curious!'
'Like me,' said the other, smiling.
'She's a very great person in her county, and she said she sympathized with the movement—only she didn't approve of our tactics, she said. We are pretty well used by now to people who don't approve of our tactics, so I just sat and waited for the "dog-whip."'
It was obvious that the lady without influence in her county winced at that, almost as though she felt the whip on her own shoulders. She was indeed a hard-hitter, this woman.
'I don't go about talking of why I carry a whip. I hate talking about it,' she flung the words out resentfully. 'But I'd been sent to try to get that woman to help, and so I explained. I told her when she asked why it seemed necessary'—again the face flushed—'I told her!—more than I've told you. And will you believe it, she never turned a hair. Just sat there with a look of cool curiosity on her face. Oh, they have no sex-pride, those upper-class women!'
'Lady Caterham probably didn't understand.'
'Perfectly. She asked questions. No, it just didn't matter much to her that a woman should suffer that sort of thing. She didn't feel the indignity of it. Perhaps if it had come to her, she wouldn't have suffered,' said the critic, with a grim contempt.