" She sat up,
and began to explain with animation. "I belong to a club in London. It
meets every Saturday, so it's called the Saturday Club. We're supposed
to talk about art, but I'm sick of talking about art--what's the good
of it? With all kinds of real things going on round one? It isn't as if
they'd got anything to say about art, either. So what I'm going to tell
'em is that we've talked enough about art, and we'd better talk about
life for a change. Questions that really matter to people's lives, the
White Slave Traffic, Women Suffrage, the Insurance Bill, and so on. And
when we've made up our mind what we want to do we could form ourselves
into a society for doing it. . . . I'm certain that if people like
ourselves were to take things in hand instead of leaving it to policemen
and magistrates, we could put a stop to--prostitution"--she lowered her
voice at the ugly word--"in six months. My idea is that men and women
ought to join in these matters. We ought to go into Piccadilly and stop
one of these poor wretches and say: 'Now, look here, I'm no better than
you are, and I don't pretend to be any better, but you're doing what you
know to be beastly, and I won't have you doing beastly things, because
we're all the same under our skins, and if you do a beastly thing it
does matter to me.' That's what Mr. Bax was saying this morning,
and it's true, though you clever people--you're clever too, aren't
you?--don't believe it.
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