But Amory called him. “Cosimo——!”
“We’ll talk about it when I get back!” Cosimo muttered, grim once more. Talking would do any time. This was the hour for action.
“But—Cosimo—wait! You can’t go to her! She’d think I’d been telling you things—she doesn’t understand these moments when the truth simply must be told! Come here and be reasonable. She’d only round on you; I know her! If I can take it calmly I think you might. I’m not angry now. I’m going to take simply no notice. ‘Let Gryll be Gryll and have his hoggish mind’—you know—it’s in the Faerie Queene. That’s what I think about it.... So you don’t mind, do you, Cosimo?”
Something in this, he did not know what, arrested Cosimo, but Amory gave him no time to think. She continued—
“We should show ourselves quite unworthy of the faith we profess to take the least bit of notice, either of us. It’s merely the old prejudice about the Subjection persisting. Why should the woman be compromised, as they call it, and not the man? They’re equally guilty or equally innocent, one would have thought? But that’s not our business really; our business is to strike and suffer, and strike and suffer, and to go on striking and suffering until not a tongue in the whole wide world dare say those hateful words again, ‘One Law for the Man and Another for the Woman!’”
“But——” Cosimo gasped.
“Isn’t it?” Amory bore him down, flinging out an adorable arm. “Isn’t it? What is the battle, then, if that isn’t it? What is every woman worth her salt, and a few devoted men, working and suffering and fighting for if it isn’t for that? They’re fighting against Wrong, Cosimo, and Vivisection, and Tuberculosis, and Man-made Laws, and the White Slave Traffic——”
But Cosimo was white. He had heard all this before, but something he had not heard before had evidently seized on him now. Again he tried to speak, but again Amory went triumphantly on.
“And with that noble task before us, what does it matter what scurrilous tongues say? Let them say! We defy the world! The world!” (She gave a contemptuous laugh). “Why, the world will be drawing its ‘conclusions’ (I believe that’s the expression) at this very moment. A young man and a young woman, discussing ideals together——,” she became brightly mocking, “—dreadful! Two beings of the opposite sex merely discussing great Social Problems—ha ha! Heavens, if they only knew! I really believe, Cosimo, that of all the times we’ve been together, if once—just once—the roof could have been lifted off and we could have been seen, perfectly innocently occupied, the world would have had such a shock to its conceit and ignorance that the Dawn would begin to-morrow! I really think that——”