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dressing-table, and Ann Veronica was
particularly trim in preparation for a call she was to make with her
aunt later in the afternoon.
    Ann Veronica decided to be more explicit. "I've been," she said,
"forbidden to come."
    "Hul-LO!" said Hetty, turning her head on the pillow; and Teddy remarked
with profound emotion, "My God!"
    "Yes," said Ann Veronica, "and that complicates the situation."
    "Auntie?" asked Constance, who was conversant with Ann Veronica's
affairs.
    "No! My father. It's—it's a serious prohibition."
    "Why?" asked Hetty.
    "That's the point. I asked him why, and he hadn't a reason."
    "YOU ASKED YOUR FATHER FOR A REASON!" said Miss Miniver, with great
intensity.
    "Yes. I tried to have it out with him, but he wouldn't have it out." Ann
Veronica reflected for an instant "That's why I think I ought to come."
    "You asked your father for a reason!" Miss Miniver repeated.
    "We always have things out with OUR father, poor dear!" said Hetty.
"He's got almost to like it."
    "Men," said Miss Miniver, "NEVER have a reason. Never! And they don't
know it! They have no idea of it. It's one of their worst traits, one of
their very worst."
    "But I say, Vee," said Constance, "if you come and you are forbidden to
come there'll be the deuce of a row."
    Ann Veronica was deciding for further confidences. Her situation
was perplexing her very much, and the Widgett atmosphere was lax and
sympathetic, and provocative of discussion. "It isn't only the dance,"
she said.
    "There's the classes," said Constance, the well-informed.
    "There's the whole situation. Apparently I'm not to exist yet. I'm not
to study, I'm not to grow. I've got to stay at home and remain in a
state of suspended animation."
    "DUSTING!" said Miss Miniver, in a sepulchral voice.
    "Until you marry, Vee," said Hetty.
    "Well, I don't feel like standing it."
    "Thousands of women have married merely for freedom," said Miss Miniver.
"Thousands! Ugh! And found it a worse slavery."
    "I suppose," said Constance, stencilling away at bright pink petals,
"it's our lot. But it's very beastly."
    "What's our lot?" asked her sister.
    "Slavery! Downtroddenness! When I think of it I feel all over boot
marks—men's boots. We hide it bravely, but so it is. Damn! I've
splashed."
    Miss Miniver's manner became impressive. She addressed Ann Veronica
with an air of conveying great open secrets to her. "As things are at
present," she said, "it is true. We live under man-made institutions,
and that is what they amount to. Every girl in the world practically,
except a few of us who teach or type-write, and then we're underpaid and
sweated—it's dreadful to think how we are sweated!" She had lost her
generalization, whatever it was. She hung for a moment, and then went
on, conclusively, "Until we have the vote that is how things WILL be."
    "I'm all for the vote," said Teddy.
    "I suppose a girl MUST be underpaid and sweated," said Ann Veronica. "I
suppose there's no way of getting a decent income—independently."
    "Women have practically NO economic freedom," said Miss Miniver,
"because they have no political freedom. Men have seen to that. The one
profession, the one decent profession, I mean, for a woman—except the
stage—is teaching, and there we trample on one another. Everywhere
else—the law, medicine, the Stock Exchange—prejudice bars us."
    "There's art," said Ann Veronica, "and writing."
    "Every one hasn't the Gift. Even there a woman never gets a fair chance.
Men are against her. Whatever she does is minimized. All the best
novels have been written by women, and yet see how men sneer at the lady
novelist still! There's only one way to get on for a woman, and that is
to please men. That is what they think we are for!"
    "We're beasts," said Teddy. "Beasts!"
    But Miss Miniver took no notice of his admission.
    "Of course," said Miss Miniver—she went on in a regularly undulating
voice—"we DO please men. We have that gift. We can see round them and
behind them and through them, and