As for suffrage, wherever there is such a thing, the woman who does not vote always controls far more men's votes than the woman-who goes to the polls, and has only her own vote to give.
Margaret, the primadonna, did not want to vote for or against anything; but she was a little too ready to assert that she could and would lead her own life as she pleased, without danger to her good name, because she had never done anything to be ashamed of.

The natural consequence was that she was gradually losing something which is really much more worth having than commonplace, technical independence.

Her friend Lushington realised the change as soon as she landed, and it hurt him to see it, because it seemed to him a great pity that what he had thought an ideal, and therefore a natural manifestation of art, should be losing the fine outlines that had made it perfect to his devoted gaze.

But this was not all.

His rather over-strung moral sense was offended as well as his artistic taste.
He felt that Margaret was blunting the sensibilities of her feminine nature and wronging a part of herself, and that the delicate bloom of girlhood was opening to a blossom that was somewhat too evidently strong, a shade too vivid and more brilliant than beautiful.
There were times when she reminded him of his mother, and those were some of the most painful moments of his present life.