Fashionable dressmaking was not precisely the work that Janet's heart was in. But she was prepared to take any position as a means to an end. Her real goal was active participation in the later phases of the women's movement. Recent happenings had revived in her the old longing to enter the thick of the battle, to pitch into the struggle for equal pay in every sort of occupation and for an equal title to legislative and administrative power.
"But I shall have to get an income of my own before I can be a factor in this struggle," she said.
"One must get an income of one's own before one can be a factor in any struggle," said Pryor, dryly.
"Yes, I've learned that, too. Feminists say that a woman must have an independent income in order to enter marriage with self-respect. They could go further and say that a woman must have an independent income in order to enter a free union with self-respect."
Pryor told her that he expected to return to the United States in a few weeks. Should he, in case he ran across Robert Lloyd, inform him of her altered views?
She said that Robert wouldn't thank him for any information about her.
"But you were such exceptionally good friends," expostulated Pryor. "Your little firm of Barr & Lloyd—what a pity you couldn't pick that thread up again, instead of joining Cornelia. If Robert weren't as poor as a church mouse, or if you both weren't too proud to borrow a little cash from me—"
Janet interrupted to veto all suggestions along that line. Pride had nothing to do with the question. It was true that she and Robert had been very good friends and excellent working partners. But Robert had emphatically said that he had no use for a woman who had damaged her social and businesss value by indulging in an adventure such as hers [Transcriber's note: several words missing from source book]
"Hm!" said Pryor. "When the shoe pinches his own foot, what astoundingly conservative exclamations even a radical fellow will make."
Janet went on to say that, although she had changed her views, she had every reason to believe that Robert had not changed his. Thus, he had taken no step whatever to communicate with her, despite the fact that she had indirectly, in her first letter to Cornelia, asked him to do so.