going to change the title on our note paper and brass plate to
'General Inquiry Agents.' That will be sufficiently non-committal.
Well then, as to sex disqualification, a few weeks hence I shall
become David Vavasour Williams, and I presume he was a male? You
don't have to pass a medical examination for the Bar, do you?"

_Praed_: "Really, Vivie, you are _unnecessarily_ coarse..."

_Vivie_: "I don't care if I am, poor outlaw that I am! Every avenue
to an honest and ambitious career seems closed to me, either because
I am a woman or--in women's careers--the few that there are--because
I am Kate Warren's daughter. _I_ am not to blame for my mother's
misdeeds, yet I am being punished for them. That beast of a friend
of yours--that filthy swine, George Crofts--set it about after I
refused to marry him that I was 'Mrs. Warren's Daughter,' and the
few nice people I knew from Cambridge days dropped me, all except
Honoria and her mother."

_Praed_: "Well, _I_ haven't dropped you. _I'll_ always stick by
you" (observes that Vivie is trying to keep back her tears).
"Vivie--_darling_--what do you want me to do? Why not marry me and
spend half my income, take the shelter of my name--I'm an A.R.A.
now--You needn't do more than keep house for me.... I'm rather
a valetudinarian--dare say I shan't trouble you long--we
could have a jolly good time before I went off with a heart
attack--travel--study--write books together--"

_Vivie_ (recovering herself): "Thanks, dear Praddy; you are a brick
and I really--in a way--have quite got to love you. Except an office
boy in Chancery Lane and W.T. Stead, I don't know any other decent