He was not disappointed. Before tea was brought in, Rose had contrived the introduction, and Gerard found himself in conversation with the girl whom he felt to be the nearest he had yet met to the sort of floating ideal of what is most gracious in woman, which he, in common with most young men, carried about in his mind, ready to crystallize into the face and form of some human, breathing, living girl.
As she interested him, so did he, perhaps, interest her. The tall, shy, handsome fair man of five-and-twenty, who spoke so softly, but who looked as if his voice could be heard in other and stronger tones upon occasion, and of whom it had been whispered in her ear by Rose that he was “so clever, bound to make a name for himself at the bar,” was pleasant to look upon and to listen to, and the two young people, in that pleasant twilight which Mrs. Aldington loved, and which she would not too soon have broken in upon by gas and candles, soon began to find that they had many things to say to each other, as they sipped tea and nibbled cake, to the accompaniment of the other gay young voices, in the illumination of the leaping firelight.
Somebody had drawn the talk of the whole room into the old channel of woman’s rights and position, and immediately the whole company had broken up into interested little couples and groups to discuss it with the same freshness of interest as if it had never been discussed before.
Rachel Davison was rather bitter about it.
“It’s all very well to talk,” she said, “about the right of woman to act for herself, and to make a position for herself, and the rest of it. But you want more than the right: you must have the power. And that is what we shall never get,” she added, with a sigh.
Gerard argued with her.
“Why shouldn’t they have the power?” he said. “When once the barriers of prejudice are pulled down, what’s to prevent a woman from entering any field where she feels her talents will be best employed?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“When once the barriers of prejudice are broken down!” echoed she. “But that will be never. You don’t recognize how strong they are! Why, look at my mother, for instance; she’s more particular about little things, prejudices and that sort of thing, than about important ones. And she’s not alone, she’s one of a type, the most common type. She would rather see her daughters dead, I’m quite sure, than engaged in any occupation which she’s been accustomed to think unwomanly.”
“But she belongs to the last generation. We go on enlarging our ideas. You, for instance, don’t agree with her, I can see.”