'I mean his interest is of one sort. It's confined to the woman he finds interesting in that way at that minute. Other women bore him. But other women have always been mightily interesting to us! Now, sh! let's listen.'
'I can understand those callow youths,' unwarily he persisted; 'she's pink and pert and all the rest, but you——'
'Oh, will you never understand? Don't you know women are more civilized than men?'
'Woman! she'll be the last animal domesticated.' It seemed as if he preferred to have her angry rather than oblivious of him.
But not for nothing did she belong to a world which dares to say whatever it wants to say.
'We are civilized enough, at all events'—there was an ominous sparkle in her eye—'to listen to men speakers clever or dull—we listen quietly enough. But men!—a person must be of your own sex for you to be able to regard him without distraction. If the woman is beautiful enough, you are intoxicated. If she's plain enough, you are impatient. All you see in any woman is her sex. You can't listen.'
'Whew!' remarked Borrodaile.
'But I must listen—I haven't got over being ashamed to find how much this girl can teach me.'
'I'm sorry for you that any of Miss Scammell's interesting speech was lost,' the chairman was saying. 'She was telling you just the kind of thing that you men ought to know, the kind of thing you get little chance of knowing about from men. Yet those wretched girls who die young of lead-poisoning, or live long enough to bring sickly babies into the world, those poor working women look to you working men for help. Are they wrong to look to you, or are they right? You working men represent the majority of the electorate. You can change things if you will. If you don't, don't think the woman will suffer alone. We shall all suffer together. More and more the masters are saying, "We'll get rid of these men—they're too many for us with their unions and their political pull. We'll get women. We'll get them for two-thirds of what we pay the men. Good business!" say the masters. But it's bad business——'
'For all but the masters,' muttered the tramp.