And then, clasping her hands about her knee, and looking steadfastly into the dark of the night, she, on her part, told him something. It was about a great new movement which was beginning in England for a change in the condition of women. Oh, it was wonderful! Miss Clough, the Principal, and all the girls at Newnham were ablaze with it, and it was going to sweep through the world. In the past the attitude towards women of literature, law, even religion, had been so unfair, so cruel. She could cry to think of it—the long martyrdom of woman through all the ages.
"Do you know," she said, "I think a good deal of the Bible itself is very wicked towards women .... That's shocking, isn't it?"
"Oh, no, no," said Victor—he was struggling to follow her, and not finding it easy.
"But all that will be changed some day," said Fenella.
It might require some terrible world-trouble to change it, some cataclysm, some war, perhaps (she didn't know what), but it would be changed—she was sure it would. And then, when woman took her rightful place beside man, as his equal, his comrade, his other self, they would see what would happen.
"What?"
All the old laws, so far as they concerned the sexes (and which of them didn't?) would have to be made afresh, and all the old tales about men and women (and which of them were not?) would have to be re-told.
"The laws made afresh, you say?"
"Yes, and some of the judges, too, perhaps."
"And all the old tales re-told?"