prison.... However.... I can't help being rather tickled by your
idea. It's vilely unjust, men closing two-thirds of the respectable
careers to women, to bachelor women above all..." (A pause, and the
two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured,
straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance
hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)--"Well, go ahead!
Follow your star! I can be confident of one thing, you won't do
anything mean or disgraceful. Deceiving Man while his vile laws and
restrictions remain in force is no crime. Be prudent, so far as
compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because if you
bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave we shall lose a
valuable source of income. Besides: any public scandal just now in
which I was mixed up might kill my mother. Want any money?"

_Vivie_: "You generous darling! _Never, never_ shall I forget your
kindness and your trust in me. You have at any rate saved one soul
alive." (Honoria deprecates gratitude.) "No, I don't want
money--yet. You made me take and bank £700 last January over that
Rio de Palmas coup--heaps more than my share. Altogether I've got
about £1,000 on deposit at the C. and C. bank, the Temple Bar
branch. I've many gruesome faults, but I _am_ thrifty. I think I can
win through to the Bar on that. Of course, if afterwards briefs
don't come in--"

_Norie_: "Well, there'll always be the partnership which will go on
unaltered. I shall pretend you are only away for a time and your
share shall be regularly paid in to your bank. Of course I shall
meet Mr. Vavasour Williams now and again and I can tell him things
and consult with him. If we think Beryl, after she is installed here
as head clerk--of course I shan't make her a partner for _years_ and