“But——If I stay I shall be beaten.” Lady Harman surveyed her hostess with a certain dismay. “Do you understand, Agatha? I can’t go back.”
“But my dear! What else can you do? What had you thought?”
“You see,” said Lady Harman, after a little struggle with that childish quality in her nerves that might, if it wasn’t controlled, make her eyes brim. “You see, I didn’t expect you quite to take this view. I thought perhaps you might be disposed——If I could have stayed with you here, only for a little time, I could have got some work or something——”
“It’s so dreadful,” said Miss Alimony, sitting far back with the relaxation of infinite regrets. “It’s dreadful.”
“Of course if you don’t see it as I do——”
“I can’t,” said Miss Alimony. “I can’t.”
She turned suddenly upon her visitor and grasped her knees with her shapely hands. “Oh let me implore you! Don’t run away. Please for my sake, for all our sakes, for the sake of Womanhood, don’t run away! Stay at your post. You mustn’t run away. You must not. If you do, you admit everything. Everything. You must fight in your home. It’s your home. That is the great principle you must grasp,—it’s not his. It’s there your duty lies. And there are your children—your children, your little ones! Think if you go—there may be a fearful fuss—proceedings. Lawyers—a search. Very probably he will take all sorts of proceedings. It will be a Matrimonial Case. How can I be associated with that? We mustn’t mix up Women’s Freedom with Matrimonial Cases. Impossible! We dare not! A woman leaving her husband! Think of the weapon it gives our enemies. If once other things complicate the Vote,—the Vote is lost. After all our self-denial, after all our sacrifices.... You see! Don’t you see?...
“Fight!” she summarized after an eloquent interval.
“You mean,” said Lady Harman,—“you think I ought to go back.”
Miss Alimony paused to get her full effect. “Yes,” she said in a profound whisper and endorsed it, “Oh so much so!—yes.”