other shifts, to resort even to this
daily paltering with the verities upon her face.

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT NICKY DID

Killigrew arrived a couple of days later, and Ishmael drove Georgie over
to meet him. Judith had refused to go and Georgie liked the idea of a
drive. Ishmael was still shy in Georgie's presence, simply because he
had never met anyone in the least like her. He was only a matter of some
thirteen or fourteen years her senior, but that made all the difference
at that period. Ishmael had been born in the midst of the dark,
benighted 'forties; Georgie at the beginning of the 'sixties. He had
grown up before any of the reforms which made modern England; she had
first become intelligently aware of the world at a time when nothing
else was in the air, when even woman was beginning to feel her wings and
be wishful to test them. She was alarmingly modern, the emancipated
young thing who began to blossom forth in the late 'seventies and early
'eighties; she studied painting at an art school, and had announced her
intention to her alarmed but admiring parents of "living her own life."
There was a horrid rumour that she had once been dared to smoke and had
done so. Her aggressively "arty" dress was only the temporary expression
of her fluid and receptive mind feeling and trying for itself. Her
frankness was disconcerting at first, yet somehow very delightful
too.... It made him feel young also; it was as though she were
perpetually telling him things that took him into a conspiracy with her.

Judy had made him feel old; all the time he was aware of things in her
life of which he was ignorant, and though he had never been intimate
enough with her to mind this, yet it did not tend towards intimacy now.
There was always the knowledge of Blanche and Phoebe between him and
any friendliness with Judith, knowledge of so much he had resolutely put
behind him. But with this careless girl, so untouched and confident, it
was as though it were possible to be the self he felt that he now was
without any drag from that old Ishmael. He knew vaguely that she was
engaged, and this seemed to make intercourse lighter and more jolly.
Every relationship is new, because to no two people is anyone quite the
same, but there was in the first tentative approaches of his
acquaintance with Georgie Barlow a novelty that struck him pleasantly.
He was shy of her only because he was still so ignorant, but he felt no
barriers, rather an o