"That's just it," Herminia answered, leaning back on the rustic seat like David's Madame Recamier. "You put your finger on the real blot when you said those words, developing equally every fibre of your natures. That's what nobody yet wants us women to do. They're trying hard enough to develop us intellectually; but morally and socially they want to mew us up just as close as ever. And they won't succeed. The zenana must go. Sooner or later, I'm sure, if you begin by educating women, you must end by emancipating them."

"So I think too," Alan answered, growing every moment more interested. "And for my part, it's the emancipation, not the mere education, that most appeals to me."

"Yes, I've always felt that," Herminia went on, letting herself out more freely, for she felt she was face to face with a sympathetic listener. "And for that reason, it's the question of social and moral emancipation that interests me far more than the mere political one,—woman's rights as they call it. Of course I'm a member of all the woman's franchise leagues and everything of that sort,—they can't afford to do without a single friend's name on their lists at present; but the vote is a matter that troubles me little in itself, what I want is to see women made fit to use it. After all, political life fills but a small and unimportant part in our total existence. It's the perpetual pressure of social and ethical restrictions that most weighs down women."

Alan paused and looked hard at her. "And they tell me," he said in a slow voice, "you're the Dean of Dunwich's daughter!"

Herminia laughed lightly,—a ringing girlish laugh. Alan noticed it with pleasure. He felt at once that the iron of Girton had not entered into her soul, as into so many of our modern young women's. There was vitality enough left in her for a genuine laugh of innocent amusement. "Oh yes," she said, merrily; "that's what I always answer to all possible objectors to my ways and ideas. I reply with dignity, 'I was brought up in the family of a clergyman of the Church of England.'"

"And what does the Dean say to your views?" Alan interposed doubtfully.

Herminia laughed again. If her eyes were profound, two dimples saved her. "I thought you were with us," she answered with a twinkle; "now, I begin to doubt it. You don't expect a man of twenty-two to be governed in all things, especially in the formation of his abstract ideas, by his father's opinions. Why then a woman?"

"Why, indeed?" Alan answered. "There I quite agree with you. I was thinking not so much of what is right and reasonable as of what is practical and usual. For most women, of course, are—well, more or less dependent upon their fathers."

"But I am not," Herminia answered, with a faint suspicion of just pride in the undercurrent of her tone. "That's in part why I went away so soon from Girton. I felt that if women are ever to be free, they must first of all be independent. It is the dependence of women that has allowed men to make laws for them, socially and ethically. So I wouldn't stop at Girton, partly because I felt the life was one-sided,—our girls thought and talked of nothing else on earth except Herodotus, trigonometry, and the higher culture,—but partly also because I wouldn't be dependent on any man, not even my own father. It left me freer to act and think as I would. So I threw Girton overboard, and came up to live in London."

"I see," Alan replied. "You wouldn't let your schooling interfere with your education. And now you support yourself?" he went on quite frankly.

Herminia nodded assent.

"Yes, I support myself," she answered; "in part by teaching at a high school for girls, and in part by doing a little hack-work for newspapers."

"Then you're just down here for your holidays, I suppose?" Alan put in, leaning forward.

"Yes, just down here for my holidays. I've lodgings on the Holmwood, in such a dear old thatched cottage; roses peep in at the porch, and birds sing on the bushes. After a term in London, it's a delicious change for one."

"But are you alone?" Alan interposed again, still half hesitating.

Herminia smiled once more; his surprise amused her. "Yes, quite alone," she answered. "But if you seem so astonished at that, I shall believe you and Mrs. Dewsbury have been trying to take me in, and that you're not really with us. Why shouldn't a woman come down alone to pretty lodgings in the country?"

"Why not, indeed?" Alan echoed in turn. "It's not at all that I disapprove, Miss Barton; on the contrary, I admire it; it's only that one's surprised to find a woman, or for the matter of that anybody, acting up to his or her convictions. That's what I've always felt; 'tis the Nemesis of reason; if people begin by thinking rationally, the danger is that they may end by acting rationally also."

Herminia laughed. "I'm afraid," she answered, "I've already reached that pass. You'll never find me hesitate to do anything on earth, once I'm convinced it's right, merely because other people think differently on the subject."

Alan looked at her and mused. She was tall and stately, but her figure was well developed, and her form softly moulded. He admired her immensely. How incongruous an outcome from a clerical family! "It's curious," he said, gazing hard at her, "that you should be a dean's daughter."

"On the contrary," Herminia answered, with perfect frankness, "I regard myself as a living proof of the doctrine of heredity."

"How so?" Alan inquired.

"Well, my father was a Senior Wrangler," Herminia replied, blushing faintly; "and I suppose that implies a certain moderate development of the logical faculties. In HIS generation, people didn't apply the logical faculties to the grounds of belief; they took those for granted; but within his own limits, my father is still an acute reasoner. And then he had always the ethical and social interests. Those two things—a love of logic, and a love of right—are the forces that tend to make us what we call religious. Worldly people don't care for fundamental questions of the universe at all; they accept passively whatever is told them; they think they think, and believe they believe it. But people with an interest in fundamental truth inquire for themselves into the constitution of the cosmos; if they are convinced one way, they become what we call theologians; if they are convinced the other way, they become what we call free-thinkers. Interest in the problem is common to both; it's the nature of the solution alone that differs in the two cases."

"That's quite true," Alan assented. "And have you ever noticed this curious corollary, that you and I can talk far more sympathetically with an earnest Catholic, for example, or an earnest Evangelical, than we can talk with a mere ordinary worldly person."

"Oh dear, yes," Herminia answered with conviction. "Thought will always sympathize with thought. It's the unthinking mass one can get no further with."

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