Part 10

“Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I, who have lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when it is best that you should begin to know--this or that?”

The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer out of the depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking, altered her mind and tried a different beginning.

“I think that every one must do their thinking--his thinking--for--oneself,” she said awkwardly.

“You mean you can't trust--?”

“It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is hungry.”

“And you find yourself hungry?”

“I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about votes and things means.”

“And we starve you--intellectually?”

“You know I don't think that. But you are busy....”

“Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After all--you are barely eighteen.... We have given you all sorts of liberties.”

Her silence admitted it. “But still,” she said after a long pause, “there are other girls, younger than I am, in these things. They talk about--oh, all sorts of things. Freely....”

“You've been awfully good to me,” she said irrelevantly. “And of course this meeting was all pure accident.”

Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a better grip.

“What exactly do you want, Eleanor?” he asked.

She looked up at him. “Generally?” she asked.

“Your mother has the impression that you are discontented.”

“Discontented is a horrid word.”

“Well--unsatisfied.”

She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to make her demand.

“I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work. I feel--so horribly ignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a son I should go--”

“Ye--es,” said the bishop and reflected.

He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.

“You could read here,” he tried.

“If I were a son, you wouldn't say that.”

His reply was vague. “But in this home,” he said, “we have a certain atmosphere.”

He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response from the hardier male.

Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply. “It's just that,” she said. “One feels--” She considered it further. “As if we were living in a kind of magic world--not really real. Out there--” she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn blind that hid the night. “One meets with different sorts of minds and different--atmospheres. All this is very beautiful. I've had the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of feeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts and questionings--”

She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.