Mrs. Wade answered in a low voice, strangely gentle.
"Don't I know their silliness and worthlessness? What woman has more reason to be ashamed of her sex?"
"Let us—hope!"
"For the millennium—yes." Her eyes gleamed, and she went on in a more accustomed tone. "Women are the great reactionary force. In political and social matters their native baseness shows itself on a large scale. They worship the vulgar, the pretentious, the false. Here they will most of them pester their husbands to vote for Welwyn-Baker just because they hate change with the hatred of weak fear. Those of them who know anything at all about the Irish question are dead set against Ireland—simply because they are unimaginative and ungenerous; they can't sympathize with what seems a hopeless cause, and Ireland to them only suggests the dirty Irish of Polterham back streets. As for European war, the idiots are fond of drums and fifes and military swagger; they haven't brains enough to picture a battle-field."
"You are severe, Mrs. Wade. I should never have ventured"——
"You are still afraid of telling me the truth!"
"Well, let us rejoice in the exceptions. Yourself, Lilian, my sister Mary, for instance."
The widow let her eyes fall and kept silence.
"We hope you will dine with us on Friday of next week," said Denzil. "Lilian posted you an invitation this morning. There will be a good many people."
"Seriously then, I am to work for you, openly and vigorously?"