Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/146



"I know," said Mr. Manning, with entirely suitable emotion.

"And think of the ordinary wives and mothers, with their anxiety, their limitations, their swarms of children!"

Mr. Manning displayed distress. He fended these things off from him with the rump of his fourth piece of cake. "I know that our social order is dreadful enough," he said, "and sacrifices all that is best and most beautiful in life. I don't defend it."

"And besides, when it comes to the idea of queens," Ann Veronica went on, "there's twenty-one and a half million women to twenty million men. Suppose our proper place is a shrine.  Still, that leaves over a million shrines short, not reckoning widows who re-marry.  And more boys die than girls, so that the real disproportion among adults is even greater."

"I know," said Mr Manning, "I know these Dreadful Statistics. I know there's a sort of right in your impatience at the slowness of Progress.  But tell me one thing I don't understand--tell me one thing:  How can you help it by coming down into the battle and the mire?  That's the thing that concerns me."

"Oh, I'm not trying to help it," said Ann Veronica. "I'm only arguing against your position of what a woman should be, and trying to get it clear in my own mind. I'm in this apartment and looking for work because-- Well, what else can I do, when my father practically locks me up?"

"I know," said Mr. Manning, "I know. Don't think I can't sympathize and understand.  Still, here we are in this dingy, foggy city.  Ye gods! what a wilderness it is!  Every one trying to get the better of every one,