'It would raise. . . .'
'No, no, we can't wait to be raised. We've got to live, and if you "raise" us we lose our means of livelihood. How are you going to get to the root cause and lift us, not the next generation, at once out of the lower depths?'
The suffragist's face contracted.
'Everything takes time,' she faltered. 'Just as I couldn't promise a charwoman that her hours would go down and her wages go up next day, I can't say that . . . of course your case is more difficult than any other, because . . . because. . . .'
'Because,' said Victoria coldly, 'I represent a social necessity. So long as your economic system is such that there is not work for the asking for every human being—work, mark you, fitted to strength and ability—so long on the other hand as there is such uncertainty as prevents men from marrying, so long as there is a leisured class who draw luxury from the labour of other men; so long will my class endure as it endured in Athens, in Rome, in Alexandria, as it does now from St John's Wood to Pekin.'
There was a pause. Then Miss Welkin got up awkwardly. Victoria followed suit.
'There,' she said, 'you don't mind my being frank, do you? May I subscribe this sovereign to the funds of the branch? I do believe you are right, you know, even though I'm not sure the millennium is coming.'
Miss Welkin looked doubtfully at the coin in her palm.
'Don't refuse it,' said Victoria, smiling, 'after all, you know, in politics there is no tainted money.'