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prowess at school. Since then the plainness had lessened a good deal; but she had got used to the idea of it, and sought no other remedy. So, now, she did not perceive, through Neil’s overemphasis, the underlying sense of failure. She took it at face-value, as an arrogant statement of virility; and somewhere within her a romantic schoolgirl, whom no one had encouraged to grow up, thrilled with admiration. The adult part of her reacted promptly with feminism.
    “When people point out—quite truly, of course—that all the great masterpieces are the work of men, one can’t help wondering what might have happened, if women who resented trivial interruptions weren’t regarded as a species of monster.”
    Neil found he had still the capacity to be irritated by this kind of thing. During term-time, there had not been one clear hour in twelve when he could call his study his own; by comparison, this woman’s life must have been a cloistral peace. But he was not sure how his temper would behave in argument; and, besides, he remembered in time that as he hadn’t produced a masterpiece, he could be held to support her point. Still, he did not feel like conceding it tamely.
    “There’s a good deal of force in what you say. But would you be hurt if I suggested that even with favourable conditions, women have—well, a natural tendency to diffuse their energies? Even within the subject itself, I mean?” Becoming momentarily interested, he was about to make the physiological analogy, but remembered in time that it would shock her to death.
    Not since she was twenty-five (and far too nervous to take advantage of it) had Miss Searle felt her essential femininity thus underlined and appealed to. Neil had been anxious not to undermine his own confidence by impatience or rudeness; he had imposed on his naturally firm voice a careful courtesy and, unconsciously, something approaching charm. While Miss Searle’s intellect sought a telling rejoinder, her cheeks became faintly pink, and her frame underwent an indefinable softening of its angles. A few minutes ago one would have described her as a thin woman: now, the spontaneous word would be slim.
    “I’m afraid I do know what you mean. The trickle of print meandering over huge boulders of footnote.” His face was quite transformed when he smiled. She went on with decision, “But I refuse to take that as typical. Think, for example—”
    Neil thought, obediently, of her examples. Having asserted himself to his satisfaction, he continued to say anything which would keep the conversation pleasant, and a going concern. He was enjoying it as people who have been some time in bed enjoy a first walk in the air, attaching little importance to the destination. Miss Searle thought him delightfully reasonable, even generous, in discussion, and reflected on the folly of judging by first impressions.
    Neil, meanwhile, was forming an inward picture of Miss Searle as an undergraduate: the busy bicycle, its basket sagging with note-books, shuttling from lecture to lecture; the leather jacket and tweed skirt which, in his day and no doubt hers, had been almost a uniform; the glasses which were lying now on the open book on her knee. He could have sworn to the exact place where a wispy bun would have bulged the black quadrangular cap, and to the kind of jug in which she would have brewed cocoa at ten-thirty. He felt a sudden sympathy for all her sisterhood about whom he and his friends had made the standard jokes; he could not find in himself, now, the Olympian perspective of twenty-one. Aware at this point that he had been gazing at her in silence for much longer than convention allowed, he sought for something to say, and bridged the interval with a smile.
    The external part of all this, as it reached Miss Searle, added up to a long, intimate look of understanding. When he started to talk again, she found that she had lost the thread twice, and had to concentrate urgently in order to have a reply