of what property used to be yours before you married him however he pleases. He can leave your jewelry to his mistress, if he likes. Did you know that, Miss Ellison? Do you think Parliament would make laws like that if it were answerable to women voters as well as men? Do you?'
Again Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, but she was overwhelmed by the flood of injustices, and over and above that the scalding outrage that burned through Florence's thin body. Charlotte sank onto the arm of her chair. Florence was not merely cataloguing the inequities of the law, she was crying out from her own pain. It was nakedly apparent, even if Charlotte had not known from Pitt how she had lost first her home and her son, then her beloved daughter. She had never considered divorce or separation because it had not occurred in her family or any of her friends. Of course she had known for years that it was commonly believed that men had natural appetites which must be satisfied, and decent women did not; therefore it was to be expected that a man might commit adultery, and a wife's only course was to conduct herself so she was never forced into a position where she was seen to know of it. It was not grounds for divorce for a wife, and anyway, a divorced woman ceased to exist in society, and a working woman would be on the streets
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dependent on whatever skills she had to earn her keep-and her skills would be minimal, and domestic. No one took a divorced woman into service.
'That, Miss Ellison, is a fraction of the reason why I want women to have a right to vote!'' Florence was staring at her, pale now, exhausted by her own emotions and all the relieved pain, the struggles that had been lost one by one. There was hatred in her powerful enough to drown out all lesser qualms of doubt or pity, or thoughts of self-preservation. Whether she had killed three men on Westminster Bridge, Charlotte did not know, but sitting on the arm of the chintz-covered chair in this sunlit room with the odor of hyacinths, she felt again the sickening conviction that Florence Ivory was capable of it.
The three women were motionless. Florence gripped me back of her chair, her knuckles white, the cloth of her dress strained at the shoulders till the stitching thread showed at the seams. Outside in the garden a bird hopped from a low lilac branch onto the windowsill.
Africa Dowell moved from the corner by the door where she had been listening. She made a move as if to touch Florence, then something in the rigid figure warned her away, and she turned to Charlotte, knowledge and fear in her eyes, and defiance.
'Florence is speaking for a great many people, more than you might imagine. Mrs. Sheridan had recently joined a group fighting for women's suffrage, and there are others up and down the country. Famous people have urged it. John Stuart Mill wrote a paper years ago-' She stopped, painfully aware that nothing she said would erase from their minds the skin-crawling knowledge of a passion that could have driven Florence Ivory to kill, and may have.
Charlotte looked at the carpet, framing her words carefully.
'You say many women feel the same,' she began. 219
'Yes, many,' Africa agreed faintly, her voice without conviction.
Charlotte met her eyes.4 'Why not all women? Why should any woman be against it, or even indifferent?'
'Florence's answer was harsh and instant. 'Because it is easier! We are brought up from the cradle to be ignorant, charming, obedient, and to depend completely on someone else to provide for us! We tell men we are fragile of body and of mind and must be protected from anything indecent or contentious, we must be looked after, we cannot be blamed for anything because we are not responsible! And they do look after us. They do as much for us as a mother does for a child that cannot walk: she carries it! And until she puts it down, it never will walk! Well I don't want to be carried all my life!' She struck her hand so violently against her chest Charlotte felt sure it must have bruised the flesh. 'I want to decide which way I will go, not be carried whether I choose to or not where someone else wishes. But many women have been told for so long they cannot walk that now they believe it, and they haven't the courage to try. Others are too lazy; it is easier to be carried.'
It was only a partial truth. Charlotte knew so many more reasons: there was love, gratitude, guilt, the need to be loved with tenderness and without contention or rivalry, the deep pleasure of earning the respect and nurturing the best in a man, and perhaps the strongest reason of all-the need to give love, to cherish the young and the weak, to support a man, who seemed in the world's eyes to be the stronger, and yet whom one learned so quickly was easily as vulnerable as oneself, often more so. The world expected so much of him, and allowed him no weakness, no tears, no failure. A host of memories came to her of Pitt, of George, of Dominic, even of her father, seen now with the wisdom of hindsight, and of other men whom the astringent wash of an investigation had stripped layer by layer of all pretense. Their hidden selves had been as frail, as full of terrors and weaknesses,
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