“What have I said?”
“Kindly think.”
“Really I am at a loss.”
“When that woman collided with me, crossing the road.”
“Ah, ah, I remember. Well?”
“You pronounced an opinion.”
“It is not my opinion. It is a matter of ascertained fact.”
“Facts are invented by people who start with their conclusions arranged beforehand.”
“Perhaps so.”
“Ah well; that is an admission.”
“The conclusion is amply verified.”
“Where?”
“I speak only of women in the mass. There are of course exceptions.”
“Go on, go on.”
“I see you are annoyed. Let us leave this matter.”
“Kindly go on.”
“There is nothing more to say.” He laughed. He was not even being aware that it was a matter of life and death. He could go on serenely living in an idea, that turned life into a nightmare.
“Oh if it amuses you.” He was silent. The moments went beating on. She turned from him and sat averted. She would go now onward and onward till she could get away over the edge of the world. There was nothing else to do. There were no thoughts or words in which her conviction could take shape. Even looking for them was a degradation. Besides, argument, if she could steady herself to face the pain of it, would not, whatever he might say, even dislodge his satisfied unconcern. He was uneasy; but only about herself, and would accept reassurance from her, without a single backward glance. But what did their personal fate matter beside a question so all-embracing? What future could they have in unacknowledged disagreement over central truth? And if it were acknowledged, what peace?
The long corridor of London imprisoned her. Far away beneath her tumult it was making its appeal, renewing the immortal compact. The irregular façades, dull greys absorbing the light, bright buffs throwing it brilliantly out, dadoed below with a patchwork of shops, and overhead the crisscross of telephone wires, shut her away from the low-hung soft grey sky. But far away, unfailing, retreating as the long corridor telescoped towards them, an obliterating saffron haze filled the vista, holding her in her place.
The end of the journey brought them to grey streets and winding alleys where the masts and rigging that had loomed suddenly in the distance, robbing the expedition of its promise of ending in some strange remoteness with their suggestion of blind busy worlds beyond London, were lost to sight.
“This must be the docks,” she said politely.
With the curt permission of a sentinel policeman they went through a gateway appearing suddenly before them in a high grey wall. Miriam hurried forward to meet the open scene for one moment alone and found herself on a little quay surrounding a square basin of motionless grey water shut in by wooden galleries, stacked with mouldering casks. But the air was the air that moves softly on still days over wide waters and in the shadowed light of the enclosure, the fringe of green where the water touched the grey stone of the quay gleamed brilliantly in the stillness. She breathed in, in spite of herself, the charm of the scene; an ordered completeness, left to itself in beauty; its lonely beauty to be gathered only by the chance passerby.
“This is a strange romantic place,” said Mr. Shatov conversationally by her side.
“There is nothing,” said Miriam unwillingly, feeling her theme weaken as she looked away from it to voice well-known words, “Nothing that reveals more completely the spiritual,” her voice gave over the word which broke into meaninglessness upon the air, “the status of a man as his estimate of women.”
“I entirely agree. I was a feminist in my college days. I am still a feminist.”
Miriam pondered. The word was new to her. But how could anyone be a feminist and still think women most certainly inferior beings?
“Ah,” she cried, “you are one of the Huxleys.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh well. He, impertinent schoolboy, graciously suggested that women should be given every possible kind of advantage, educational and otherwise; saying almost in the same breath that they could never reach the highest places in civilisation; that Nature’s Salic Law would never be repealed.”
“Well, how is it to be repealed?”
“I don’t know I’m sure. I’m not wise enough to give instruction in repealing a law that has never existed. But who is Huxley, that he should take upon himself to say what are the highest places in civilisation?”
“Miriam,” he said, coming round to stand before her. “We are not going to quarrel over this matter.” She refused to meet his eyes.
“It is not a question of quarrelling, or even discussion. You have told me all I want to know. I see exactly where you stand; and for my part it decides, many things. I don’t say this to amuse myself or because I want to, but because it is the only thing I can possibly do.”
“Miriam. In this spirit nothing can be said at all. Let us rather go and have tea.”
Poor little man, perhaps he was weary; troubled in this strange grey corner of a country not his own, isolated with an unexpected anger. They had tea in a small dark room behind a little shop. It was close packed with an odorous dampness. Miriam sat frozen, appalled by the presence of a negro. He sat near by, huge, bent snorting and devouring, with a huge black bottle at his side. Mr. Shatov’s presence was shorn of its alien quality. He was an Englishman in the fact that he and she could not sit eating in the neighbourhood of this marshy jungle. But they were, they had. They would have. Once away from this awful place she would never think of it again. Yet the man had hands and needs and feelings. Perhaps he could sing. He was at a disadvantage, an outcast. There was something that ought to be said to him. She could not think what it was. In his oppressive presence it was impossible to think at all. Every time she sipped her bitter tea it seemed that before
