thorough, never slipshod. Her brain
ground slowly, but it ground exceeding small; there were no blurred edges
to her apprehension of facts; either she didn't know a thing or she did,
and that sharp and clear distinction is none too common. She would file
and index papers with precision, and find them again, slow and sure, when
they were required. Added to these secretarial gifts, such as they were,
she had vision; she saw always the dream through or in spite of the
business; she was like Barry himself in that. She was a good companion,
too, though she had no wit and not very much humour, and none of Nan's
gifts of keen verbal brilliance, frequent ribaldry and quick response;
she would digest an idea slowly, and did not make jokes; her clear mind
had the quality of a crystal rather than of a flashing diamond. The
rising generation; the woman citizen of to-morrow: what did not rest on
her, and what might she not do and be? Nan, on the other hand, was the
woman citizen of to-day. And Nan did not bother to use her vote because
she found all the parties and all the candidates about equally absurd.
Barry had argued with Nan about that, but made no impression on her
cynical indifference; she had met him with levity. To Gerda there was a
wrong and a right in politics, instead of only a lot of wrongs; touching
young faith, Nan called it, but Barry, who shared it, found it cheering.

This pretty little white pixyish person, with her yellow hair cut
straight across her forehead and waving round her neck like the curled,
shining petals of a celandine, with her straight-thinking mind and her
queer, secret, mystic thoughts--she was the woman of the future, a
citizen and a mother of citizens. She and the other girls and boys were
out to build the new heaven and the new earth, and their children would
carry it on. This responsibility of Gerda's invested her with a special
interest in the eyes of Barry, who lived and worked for the future, and
who, when he saw an infant mewling and puking in a pram, was apt to think
"The hope for the world," and smile at it encouragingly, overlooking its
present foolishness of aspect and habit. If ever he had children ... if
Nan would marry him ... but Nan would always lightly slide away when he
got near her.... He could see her now, with the cool, amused smile
tilting her lips, always sliding away, eluding him.... Nan, like a wild
animal for grace, brilliant like blown fire, cool like the wind, stabbing