“In that case it’s a misprint,” said the suffragette. “I am twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six,” repeated the priest. “I wonder why you are bitter—at twenty-six?”
“Because I have taken some trouble not to be sweet,” she said. “Because I was not born blind.”
As a matter of fact she had been born morally short-sighted. She had never seen the distant delight of the world at all.
The priest did not believe in anything approaching metaphor. He considered himself to be too manly. So he deflected the course of the conversation. “And your husband. What are his views on the Great Question?” (A slight relapse into roguishness on the last two words.)
“I have never asked him. I know he does not believe in concrete arguments from women. Though he approves of them from men.” She fingered a bruise on her arm.
“The arguments about women’s lack of physical force are the most incontrovertible ones your cause has to contend with,” said the priest. “Say what you will, physical force is the basis of life.”
“I think it is a confession of weakness.”
“There is something in what you say,” said the priest. He did not really think there was, for he had taken no steps to investigate. He was busy thinking that this was an odd wife who did not know her husband’s views on a question that obsessed her own thoughts.
The gardener had by now extracted Courtesy from the tangle, and was steering her towards a chair.