ther day
I saw a sight that fairly took my breath away--about twenty jelly-fish,
semi-transparent, pink, with long streamers, floating on the top of the
waves."

"Sure they weren't mermaids?" said Hirst. "It's much too hot to climb
uphill." He looked at Helen, who showed no signs of moving.

"Yes, it's too hot," Helen decided.

There was a short silence.

"I'd like to come," said Rachel.

"But she might have said that anyhow," Helen thought to herself as Hewet
and Rachel went away together, and Helen was left alone with St. John,
to St. John's obvious satisfaction.

He may have been satisfied, but his usual difficulty in deciding that
one subject was more deserving of notice than another prevented him from
speaking for some time. He sat staring intently at the head of a dead
match, while Helen considered--so it seemed from the expression of her
eyes--something not closely connected with the present moment.

At last St. John exclaimed, "Damn! Damn everything! Damn everybody!" he
added. "At Cambridge there are people to talk to."

"At Cambridge there are people to talk to," Helen echoed him,
rhythmically and absent-mindedly. Then she woke up. "By the way, have
you settled what you're going to do--is it to be Cambridge or the Bar?"

He pursed his lips, but made no immediate answer, for Helen was still
slightly inattentive. She had been thinking about Rachel and which of
the two young men she was likely to fall in love with, and now sitting
opposite to Hirst she thought, "He's ugly. It's a pity they're so ugly."

She did not include Hewet in this criticism; she was thinking of the
clever, honest, interesting young men she knew, of whom Hirst was a
good example, and wondering whether it was necessary that thought and
scholarship should thus maltreat their bodies, and should thus elevate
their minds to a very high tower from which the human race appeared to
them like rats and mice squirming on the flat.

"And the future?" she reflected, vaguely envisaging a race of men
becoming more and more like Hirst, and a race of women becoming more and
more like Rachel. "Oh no," she concluded, glancing at him, "one wouldn't
marry you. Well, then, the future of the race is in the hands of Susan
and Arthur; no--that's dreadful. Of farm labourers; no--not of the
English at all, but of Russians and Chinese." This train of thought did
not satisfy her, and was interrupted by St. John, who began again:

"I wish you knew Bennett. H