"She is a slave to her environment! Do you think she would have dared to do the things I do?"
"She wouldn't have wanted to."
"You evade. Well, I suppose you belong to another generation." Arthur Weston winced. "Don't you think it's queer," she ruminated, "that a man like Howard Maitland is satisfied to fool around with shells?" Whenever she spoke of Howard, a dancing sense of happiness rose like a wave in her breast. "Why doesn't he get into politics, and do something!" she said. Her voice was disapproving, but her eyes smiled.
"Perhaps he likes to keep his hands clean."
"Oh," she said, vehemently, "that's what I hate about men. The good ones, the decent ones, are so afraid of getting a speck of dirt on themselves! That's where women—not Grandmother's kind—are going to save the world. They won't mind being smirched to save the race!"
"Frederica," her listener said, calmly, "when that time comes, may God have mercy on the race. Your grandmother (I speak generically) thought she saved the race by keeping clean."
"And letting men be—" she paused to find a sufficiently vehement word. "It's the double standard that has landed us where we are; it has made men vile and kept women weak. We'll go to smash unless we have one standard."
"Which one?" he asked; "yours or ours?"
"You know perfectly well," she said, for once affronted.