"Here's Ned! I'll appeal to him! Do you think it fair that we women shouldn't have votes?"
"We shall have to settle our terminology first, Helen," he replied in the same tone. "What is fair? I presume what Mrs. Tressilian considers to be right."
"That isn't fair if you like," she retorted. "Fair is"--she paused.
"Exactly so!" laughed Peter Ramsay. "Is there an outside standard or is there not? That is the question."
Mr. Hirsch, who always wore white waistcoats in the evening (they were not so becoming as black ones) answered it.
"Of course there is a standard--the general consensus of opinion."
"Made up of units?" suggested Dr. Ramsay.
"Quite so!" retorted the financier, "but it gives the limit of safety. Between certain lines you can negotiate--even on the Stock Exchange, ha, ha!" His laugh was curiously explosive and shook him from head to foot.
"But surely there is a standard," said Helen softly.
"There is a standard which, collectively, we accept, Helen. It comes back in the end to our personal verdict, I'm afraid," said her cousin, "and it is curious how that verdict varies," he continued addressing Mr. Hirsch. "You, I expect, believe in the law of supply and demand. Now, I feel, somehow, that if I were to charge a thousand pounds for a glass of water which a distracted husband wanted for his dying wife, I should be doing a detestably mean thing, even though the man was quite willing and able to pay for it." There was a pause.