“For a woman there is only one,” said Corinna.
“Oh!” said Martin. “May I sit down?”
“Please do.”
She poked a tiny fire in a diminutive tiled grate, while he selected the most solid of the bamboo chairs. She sat on a stool on the hearthrug.
“I suppose you’re anti-suffrage like any other bigoted reactionary,” she said.
Martin replied truly: “I haven’t worried about it one way or the other.”
She turned on him swiftly. “Then you’re worse than a downright opponent. It’s just the contemptuous apathy of men like you that drive us mad.”
She entered upon a long and nervous tirade, trotting out the old arguments, using the stock phrases, parroting a hundred platform speeches. And all the time, though appearing to attack, she was on the defensive, defiant, desperate. Martin regarded her with a shocked expression. Her thin blonde beauty was being pinched into shrewishness.
“But, my dear Corinna,” said he. “I’ve come to see you, as an old friend. I just want to know how you’re getting on. What’s the good of a political argument between us two? You may be wrong or you may be right. I haven’t studied the question. Let us drop it from a contentious point of view. Let us meet humanly. Or if you like, let us tell each other the outside things that have happened to us. You haven’t even asked me why I’m here. You haven’t asked after Félise, or Fortinbras, or Bigourdin.” He waxed warm. “I’ve just come from Brantôme. Surely you must have some grateful memories of the folks there. They treated you splendidly. Surely you must still take some interest in them.”
Corinna supported herself on an outspread hand on the hearthrug.