nameless atrocities with regard to his daughter, as
indeed she had always suspected him of bullying his wife. Naturally she
fell to comparing her own fortunes with the fortunes of her friend, for
Willoughby's wife had been perhaps the one woman Helen called friend,
and this comparison often made the staple of their talk. Ridley was a
scholar, and Willoughby was a man of business. Ridley was bringing out
the third volume of Pindar when Willoughby was launching his first ship.
They built a new factory the very year the commentary on Aristotle--was
it?--appeared at the University Press. "And Rachel," she looked at
her, meaning, no doubt, to decide the argument, which was otherwise too
evenly balanced, by declaring that Rachel was not comparable to her
own children. "She really might be six years old," was all she said,
however, this judgment referring to the smooth unmarked outline of the
girl's face, and not condemning her otherwise, for if Rachel were ever
to think, feel, laugh, or express herself, instead of dropping milk
from a height as though to see what kind of drops it made, she might be
interesting though never exactly pretty. She was like her mother, as the
image in a pool on a still summer's day is like the vivid flushed face
that hangs over it.

Meanwhile Helen herself was under examination, though not from either of
her victims. Mr. Pepper considered her; and his meditations, carried
on while he cut his toast into bars and neatly buttered them, took him
through a considerable stretch of autobiography. One of his penetrating
glances assured him that he was right last night in judging that Helen
was beautiful. Blandly he passed her the jam. She was talking nonsense,
but not worse nonsense than people usually do talk at breakfast, the
cerebral circulation, as he knew to his cost, being apt to give trouble
at that hour. He went on saying "No" to her, on principle, for he never
yielded to a woman on account of her sex. And here, dropping his eyes
to his plate, he became autobiographical. He had not married himself for
the sufficient reason that he had never met a woman who commanded his
respect. Condemned to pass the susceptible years of youth in a railway
station in Bombay, he had seen only coloured women, military women,
official women; and his ideal was a woman who could read Greek, if not
Persian, was irreproachably fair in the face, and able to understand the
small things he let fall while undressing. As it wa