Miss Beauchamp shaded her eyes with her left hand again, while the many bracelets slipping up her thin wrist clinked and rattled.
"See here, my dear Savage," she said, "among all the destructions and reconstructions, the changes—many of them nominal rather than real, and, consequently, superfluous—of which Modernity is made up, one change is very real and has, I sincerely believe, come to stay. I mean the widespread change in thought and attitude of my sex toward yours."
"Feminism, in short."
"In short, Feminism."
A little silence followed. Then: "You take the dose very nicely," Anastasia said.
"Perhaps I take it so nicely because I am convinced it is innocuous. On the other hand, perhaps I don't take it at all. Really, I am not certain which."
He shifted his position, planting his elbows on his knees and his chin in the hollow of his hands.
"The deuce, the deuce!" he said, softly, tapping one long-toed boot meditatively upon the floor.
Miss Beauchamp watched him, amused, observant, making no comment.
"I am sorry," he went on, presently. "It's all moonshine, of course. Nature's too strong for them. In the end they must come into line."