ormal female standard," hover as if for
some outbreak of passionate gratitude and with admiring retrospects
that made the facetted spectacles gleam like diamonds, return to his own
place.
The women, Ann Veronica thought, were not quite so interesting as the
men. There were two school-mistresses, one of whom--Miss Klegg--might
have been a first cousin to Miss Miniver, she had so many Miniver
traits; there was a preoccupied girl whose name Ann Veronica never
learned, but who worked remarkably well; and Miss Garvice, who began
by attracting her very greatly--she moved so beautifully--and ended by
giving her the impression that moving beautifully was the beginning and
end of her being.
Part 2
The next few weeks were a time of the very liveliest thought and growth
for Ann Veronica. The crowding impressions of the previous weeks seemed
to run together directly her mind left the chaotic search for employment
and came into touch again with a coherent and systematic development
of ideas. The advanced work at the Central Imperial College was in the
closest touch with living interests and current controversies; it drew
its illustrations and material from Russell's two great researches--upon
the relation of the brachiopods to the echinodermata, and upon the
secondary and tertiary mammalian and pseudo-mammalian factors in the
free larval forms of various marine organisms. Moreover, a vigorous fire
of mutual criticism was going on now between the Imperial College and
the Cambridge Mendelians and echoed in the lectures. From beginning to
end it was first-hand stuff.
But the influence of the science radiated far beyond its own special
field--beyond those beautiful but highly technical problems with which
we do not propose for a moment to trouble the naturally terrified
reader. Biology is an extraordinarily digestive science. It throws out a
number of broad experimental generalizations, and then sets out to
bring into harmony or relation with these an infinitely multifarious
collection of phenomena. The little streaks upon the germinating area
of an egg, the nervous movements of an impatient horse, the trick of
a calculating boy, the senses of a fish, the fungus at the root of a
garden flower, and the slime upon a sea-wet rock--ten thousand such
things bear their witness and are illuminated. And not only did these
tentacular generalizations gather all the facts of natural history and
comparative anatomy together, but they
|