’We might argue that, if it were peace-time.  But this is war!  Your country—­my country—­has the German grip at her throat.  A few months—­and we are saved—­or broken!—­the country that gave us birth—­all we have—­all we are!’ Her words came short and thick, and she had turned very white.  ’And in this house there is never, in your presence, a word of the war!—­of the men who are dying by land and sea—­dying, that you and I may sit here in peace—­that you may talk to me about Greek poetry, and put spokes in the wheels of those who are trying to feed us—­and defend us—­and beat off Germany.  Nothing for the wounded!—­nothing for the hospitals!  And you won’t let Pamela do anything!  Not a farthing for the Red Cross!  You made me write a letter last week refusing a subscription.  And then, when they only ask you to let your land grow food—­that the German pirates and murderers mayn’t starve us into a horrible submission—­then you bar your gates—­you make endless trouble, when the country wants every hour of every man’s time—­you, in your position, give the lead to every shirker and coward!  No!  I can’t bear it any more!  I must go.  I have had happy times here—­I love the work—­I am very glad to earn the money, for my people want it.  But I must go.  My heart—­my conscience won’t let me stay!’

She turned from him, with an unconscious gesture which seemed to the Squire to be somewhat mingled with that of the great Victory towering behind her, and went quickly back to her table, where she began with trembling hands to put her papers together.

The Squire tried to laugh it off.

‘And all this,’ he said with a sneer, ’because I tied up a few gates!’

She made no reply.  He was conscious of mingled dismay and fury.

‘You will stay your month?’ he inquired at last, coldly.  ’You don’t propose, I imagine, to leave me at a moment’s notice?’

She was bending over her table, and did not look up.

‘Oh yes, I will stay my month.’

He sat speechless, watching her.  She very quickly finished what she was doing, and taking up her note-book, and some half-written letters, she left the room.

‘A pretty state of things!’ said the Squire, and thrusting his long hands into his pockets he began to pace the library, in the kind of temper that may be imagined—­given the man and the circumstances.

The difference, however, between this occasion and others lay in the fact that the penalties of temper had grown so unjustly heavy.  The Squire felt himself hideously aggrieved.  Abominable!—­that he should be hindered in his just rights and opinions by this indirect pressure from a woman, whom he couldn’t wrestle with and floor, as he would a man, because of her sex.  That was always the way with women.  No real equality—­no give and take—­in spite of all the suffrage talk.  Their weakness was their tyranny.  Weakness indeed!  They were much stronger than men.  God help England when they got the vote!  The Greeks said it—­Euripides said it.  But, of course, the Greeks have said everything!  Hecuba to Agamemnon, for instance, when she is planning the murder of the Thracian King: