"Half the reasonable women in England want the vote. Why shouldn't I have a vote—as well as you?"
"Because, my dear lady—" the doctor smote the table with his hand for emphasis—"because the parliamentary vote means the government of men by men—without which we go to pieces. And you propose now to make it include the government of men by women—which is absurd!—and if you try it, will only break up the only real government that exists, or can exist!"
"Oh!—'physical force,'" said Madeleine, contemptuously, with her nose in the air.
"Well—did I—did you—make the physical difference between men and women? Can we unmake it?" "We are governed by discussion—not by force."
"Are we? Look at South Africa—look at Ulster—look at the labour troubles that have been, and are to be. And then you women come along with your claim to the vote! What are you doing but breaking up all the social values—weakening all the foundations of the social edifice! Woe!—to you women especially—when you teach men to despise the vote—when men come to know that behind the paper currency of a vote which may be a man's or a woman's, there is nothing but an opinion—bad or good! At present, I tell you, the great conventions of democracy hold because there is reality of bone and muscle behind them! Break down that reality—and sooner or later we come back to force again—through bloodshed and anarchy!"
"Inevitable—all the same!" cried Madeleine. "Why did you ever let us taste education?—if you are to deny us for ever political equality?"
"Use your education, my dear Madam!" said the doctor, indignantly. "Are there not many roads to political equality?—many forms of government within government, that may be tried, before you insist on ruining us by doing men's work in the men's way? Hasn't it taken more than a hundred years to settle that Irish question, which began with the Union? Is it a hundred years since it was a hanging matter to steal a handkerchief off a hedge? Can't you give us a hundred years for the Woman Question? Sixty years only, since the higher education of women began! Isn't the science of government developing every day? Women have got, you say, to be fitted into government—I agree! I agree! But don't rush it! Claim everything—what you like!—except only that sovereign vote, which controls, and must control, the male force of an Empire!"
"Jove's thunder!" scoffed Lady Tonbridge. "Well—my dear old friend!—you and I shan't agree—you know that. Now what can I do for Delia?"
"Nothing," said France gloomily. "Unless some one goes up to watch over her."
"Her guardian will go," said Madeleine quietly, after a pause.