o Barry Briscoe. It will be a quaint
menage, but I daresay they'd pull it off. Barry's delightful. I should
think even Nan could live with him."

"He writes books about education, doesn't he? Education and democracy."

"Well, he does. But there's always something, after all, against all
of us. And it might be worse. It might be poetry or fiction or
psycho-analysis."

Neville said psycho-analysis in order to start another hare and take
her mother's attention off Nan's marriage before the marriage became
crystallised out of all being. But Mrs. Hilary for the first time (for
usually she was reliable) did not rise. She looked thoughtful, even a
shade embarrassed, and said vaguely, "Oh, people must write, of course.
If it isn't one thing it will be another." After a moment she added,
"This psycho-analysis, Neville," saying the word with distaste indeed,
but so much more calmly than usual that Neville looked at her in
surprise. "This psycho-analysis. I suppose it does make wonderful cures,
doesn't it, when all is said?"

"Cures--oh yes, wonderful cures. Shell-shock, insomnia, nervous
depression, lumbago, suicidal mania, family life--anything." Neville's
attention was straying to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards
them down the path, leaning on her stick, so she did not see Mrs.
Hilary's curious, lit eagerness.

"But how _can_ they cure all those things just by talking indecently
about sex?"

"Oh mother, they don't. You're so crude, darling. You've got hold of
only one tiny part of it--the part practised by Austrian professors on
Viennese degenerates. Many of the doctors are really sane and brilliant.
I know of cases...."

"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, quickly and rather crossly, "I can't talk about
it before Grandmama."

Neville got up to meet Grandmama, put a hand under her arm, and conducted
her to her special chair beneath the cedar. You had to help and conduct
someone so old, so frail, so delightful as Grandmama, even if Mrs. Hilary
did wish it were being done by any hand than yours. Mrs. Hilary in fact
made a movement to get to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise
from low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had to watch her
daughter leading her mother, and to note once more with a familiar pang
the queer, unmistakable likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and
the old wrinkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the old faded
ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile and