He discovered it in looking round just as
she drew her smile over a spasm of her face and throat. And, leaning out
of the car, he said:

"Drive very slowly, Batter; I want to look at the trees."

A little sigh rewarded him. Since SHE had said nothing, He said nothing,
and Clara's words in the hall seemed to him singularly tactless:

"Oh! I meant to have reminded you, Felix, to send the car back and take
a fly. I thought you knew that Mother's terrified of motors." And at his
mother's answer:

"Oh! no; I quite enjoyed it, dear," he thought: 'Bless her heart! She IS
a stoic!'

Whether or no to tell her of the 'kick-up at Joyfields' exercised his
mind. The question was intricate, for she had not yet been informed that
Nedda and Derek were engaged, and Felix did not feel at liberty to
forestall the young people. That was their business. On the other hand,
she would certainly glean from Clara a garbled understanding of the
recent events at Joyfields, if she were not first told of them by
himself. And he decided to tell her, with the natural trepidation of one
who, living among principles and theories, never quite knew what those,
for whom each fact is unrelated to anything else under the moon, were
going to think. Frances Freeland, he knew well, kept facts and theories
especially unrelated, or, rather, modified her facts to suit her
theories, instead of, like Felix, her theories to suit her facts. For
example, her instinctive admiration for Church and State, her instinctive
theory that they rested on gentility and people who were nice, was never
for a moment shaken when she saw a half-starved baby of the slums. Her
heart would impel her to pity and feed the poor little baby if she could,
but to correlate the creature with millions of other such babies, and
those millions with the Church and State, would not occur to her. And if
Felix made an attempt to correlate them for her she would look at him and
think: 'Dear boy! How good he is! I do wish he wouldn't let that line
come in his forehead; it does so spoil it!' And she would say: "Yes,
darling, I know, it's very sad; only I'm NOT clever." And, if a Liberal
government chanced to be in power, would add: "Of course, I do think this
Government is dreadful. I MUST show you a sermon of the dear Bishop of
Walham. I cut it out of the 'Daily Mystery.' He puts things so well--he
always has such nice ideas."

And Felix, getting up, would walk a little and sit d