'For fear they'd call us fishes?'
Lady John had been frankly shocked at the previous plain speaking, but she found herself stimulated to show in this moment of privacy that even she had not travelled her sheltered way through the world altogether in blinkers.
'They talk of our lack of self-control, but,' she admitted, 'it's the last thing men want women to have.'
'Oh, we know what they want us to have! So we make shift to have it. If we don't, we go without hope—sometimes we go without bread.'
'Vida! Do you mean to say that you——'
'I mean to say that men's vanity won't let them see it, but the thing's largely a question of economics.'
'You never loved him, then!'
'Yes, I loved him—once. It was my helplessness that turned the best thing life can bring into a curse for both of us.'
'I don't understand you——'