yed. Your own
scullery maid would turn up her nose at you. The man that brought the
milk will sneer."

"I don't think," Gerda said, after reflection, "that I'm very easily
annoyed. I don't notice things, very often. I think about other things
rather a lot, you see. That's why I'm slow at answering."

"Well, Barry would be annoyed, anyhow."

"Barry does lots of unpopular things. He doesn't mind what people say."

"He'd mind for you.... But Barry isn't going to do it. Barry won't have
you on your terms. If you won't have him on his, he'll leave you and go
and find some nicer girl."

"I can't help it, mother. I can't do what I don't approve of for that.
How could I?"

"No, darling, of course you couldn't; I apologise. But do try and see if
you can't get to approve of it, or anyhow to be indifferent about it.
Such a little thing! It isn't as if Barry wanted you to become a Mormon
or something.... And after all you can't accuse him of being retrograde,
or Victorian, if you like to use that silly word, or lacking in ideals
for social progress--can you? He belongs to nearly all your illegal
political societies, doesn't he? Why, his house gets raided for leaflets
from time to time. I don't think they ever find any, but they look, and
that's something. You can't call Barry hide-bound or conventionally
orthodox."

"No. Oh no. Not that. Or I shouldn't be caring for him. But he doesn't
understand about this. And you don't, mother, nor father, nor anyone of
your ages. I don't know how it is, but it is so."

"You might try your Aunt Rosalind," Neville suggested, with malice.

Gerda shuddered. "Aunt Rosalind ... she wouldn't understand at all...."

But the dreadful thought was, as Neville had intended, implanted in
her that, of all her elder relatives, it was only Aunt Rosalind who,
though she mightn't understand, might nevertheless agree. Aunt Rosalind
on free unions... that would be terrible to have to hear. For Aunt
Rosalind would hold with them not because she thought them right but
because she enjoyed them--the worst of reasons. Gerda somehow felt
degraded by the introduction into the discussion of Aunt Rosalind, whom
she hated, whom she knew, without having been told so, that her mother
and all of them hated. It dragged it down, made it vulgar.

Gerda lay back in silence, the springs of argument and talk dried in her.
She wanted Kay.

It was no use; they couldn't meet. Neville could not get away from her
tradition