"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."