ery stories with avidity. She did not believe
that life was really much like that, and Kay's assertion that if it
weren't it ought to be, she rightly regarded as pragmatical. Neither did
she share Kay's more fundamental taste for the Elizabethans, Carolines
and Augustans. She and Kay met (as regards literature) only on economics,
politics, and modern verse. Gerda's mind was artistic rather than
literary, and she felt no wide or acute interest in human beings, their
actions, passions, foibles, and desires.

So, surrounded by books from the Times library, and by nearly all the
weekly and monthly reviews (the Bendishes, like many others, felt, with
whatever regret, that they had to see all of these), Gerda for the most
part, when alone, lay and dreamed dreams and ate pears.

2

Barry came down for week-ends. He and Gerda had declared their affections
towards one another even at the Looe infirmary, where Gerda had been
conveyed from the scene of accident. It had been no moment then for
anything more definite than statements of reciprocal emotion, which are
always cheering in sickness. But when Gerda was better, well enough, in
fact, to lie in the Windover conservatory, Barry came down from town and
said, "When shall we get married?"

Then Gerda, who had had as yet no time or mind-energy to reflect on the
probable, or rather certain, width of the gulf between the sociological
theories of herself and Barry, opened her blue eyes wide and said
"Married?"

"Well, isn't that the idea? You can't jilt me now, you know; matters have
gone too far."

"But, Barry, I thought you knew. I don't hold with marriage."

Barry threw back his head and laughed, because she looked so innocent and
so serious and young as she lay there among the pears and bandages.

"All right, darling. You've not needed to hold with it up till now. But
now you'd better catch on to it as quickly as you can, and hold it tight,
because it's what's going to happen."

Gerda moved her bandaged head in denial.

"Oh, no, Barry. I can't.... I thought you knew. Haven't we ever talked
about marriage before?"

"Oh, probably. Yes, I think I've heard you and Kay both on the subject.
You don't hold with legal ties in what should be purely a matter of
emotional impulse, I know. But crowds of people talk like that and then
get married. I've no doubt Kay will too, when his time comes."

"Kay won't. He thinks marriage quite wrong. And so do I."

Barry, who had stop