er, whistling softly into the night.
Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London
swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, squalid,
grotesque life, bitter as black tea, sour as stale wine! Gloriously
funny, brilliant as a flower-bed, bright as a Sitwell street in hell--

"(Down in Hell's gilded street
Snow dances fleet and sweet,
Bright as a parakeet....)"

unsteady as a swing-boat, silly as a drunkard's dream, tragic as a poem
by Massfield.... To have one's corner in it, to run here and there about
the city, grinning like a dog--what more did one want? Human adventures,
intellectual adventures, success, even a little fame, men and women,
jokes, laughter and love, dancing and a little drink, and the fields and
mountains and seas beyond--what more did one want?

Roots. That was the metaphor that had eluded Nan. To be rooted and
grounded in life, like a tree. Someone had written something about that.

"Let your manhood be
Forgotten, your whole purpose seem
The purpose of a simple tree
Rooted in a quiet dream...."

Roots. That was what Neville had, what Pamela had; Pamela, with her
sensible wisdom that so often didn't apply because Pamela was so far
removed from Nan's conditions of life and Nan's complicated, unstable
temperament. Roots. Mrs. Hilary's had been torn up out of the ground....

"I'm like mother." That was Nan's nightmare thought. Not intellectually,
for Nan's brain was sharp and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's
was an amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not from Mrs. Hilary,
did Nan get her black fits of melancholy, her erratic irresponsible
gaieties, her passionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The
clever young woman saw herself in the stupid elderly one; saw herself
slipping down the years to that. That was why, where Neville and Pamela
and their brothers pitied, Nan, understanding her mother's bad moods
better than they, was vicious with hate and scorn. For she knew these
things through and through. Not the sentimentality; she didn't know that,
being cynical and cool except when stirred to passion. And not the
posing, for Nan was direct and blunt. But the feverish angers and the
black boredom--they were hers.

Nevertheless Nan's heart sang into the night. For she had made up her
mind, and was at peace.

She had held life at arm's length, pushed it away, for many months,
hiding from it, running from it because she