"Another three months! What would my pupils do, and what would Miss
Cursiter say?"
It was part of the illusion that she conceived herself to be indispensable to Miss Cursiter.
"Confound Miss Cursiter!"
Evidently he felt strongly on the subject of Miss Cursiter. He confounded her with such energy that the seat provided for them by the London County Council vibrated under it. He stared sulkily out over the park a moment; he gave his cuffs a hitch as if he were going to fight somebody, and then—he let himself go.
At a blind headlong pace, lashing himself up as he went, falling furiously on civilization, the social order, women's education and women's labour, the system that threw open all doors to them, and let them be squeezed and trampled down together in the crush. He was ready to take the nineteenth century by the throat and strangle it; he squared himself against the universe.
"What," said Miss Quincey, "do you not believe in equal chances for men and women?" She was eager to redeem herself from the charge of flightiness.
"Equal chances? I daresay. But not unequal work. The work must be unequal if the conditions are unequal. It's not the same machine. To turn a woman on to a man's work is like trying to run an express train by clock-work, with a pendulum for a piston, and a hairspring for steam."
Miss Quincey timidly hinted that the question was a large one, that there was another side to it.
"Of course there is; there are fifty sides to it; but there are too many people looking at the other forty-nine for my taste. I loathe a crowd."
Stirred by a faint esprit de corps Miss Quincey asked him if he did not believe in the open door for women?