s: "This is the first
time I have ever lived alone, that I have ever been free from questions.
It was a pleasure to remember suddenly, as I was dressing, that no one
would ask me where I was going; that I was just like a bird myself, free
to spring off the branch and to fly. At home there are always people
round one; somebody is in the dining room, somebody is in the
drawing-room; and if one goes down the passage with one's hat on, there
is always somebody to ask where one is going, and if you say you don't
know, they say: 'Are you going to the right or to the left? Because, if
you are going to the left, I should like you to stop at the apothecary's
and to ask....'"

Yes, that is what happens. That is the tragedy of the family; it lives
on top of itself. The daughters go too much with their mothers to shop;
there are too many joint holidays, too many compulsory rejoicings at
Christmas or on birthdays. There are not enough private places in the
house. I have heard one young suffragist, sentenced to fourteen days for
breaking windows, say that, quite apart from having struck a blow for
the Cause, it was the first peaceful fortnight she had ever known. This
should not be confounded with the misunderstood offer of a wellknown
leader of the suffrage cause who offered a pound to the funds of the
movement for every day that his wife was kept in jail.

In a family, friendships are difficult, for Maude does not always like
Arabella's dearest friend; or, which is worse, Maude will stand
Arabella's dearest friend, whom she detests, so that next day she may
have the privilege of forcing upon Arabella her own, whom Arabella
cannot bear. That sort of thing is called tolerance and self-sacrifice;
in reality it is mutual tyranny, and amounts to the passing on of
pinches, as it were, from boy to boy on the benches of schools. In a
developing generation this cannot endure; youthful egotism will not
forever tolerate youthful arrogance. As for the old, they cannot
indefinitely remain with the young, for, after all, there are only two
things to talk of with any intensity--the future and the past; they are
the topics of different generations.

Still, for various reasons, this condition is endured. It is cheaper to
live together; it is more convenient socially; it is customary, which,
especially in England, is most important. But it demands an impossible
and unwilling tolerance, sometimes fraudulent exhibitions of love,
sometimes sham char