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"It is jolly to be back," Brun confided to Beaminster. "Very touching. I could cry for two-pence."

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It was very good of the kindly old thing to offer the girls a lift in her four-wheeler. Four-wheelers were now remarkable and even romantic phenomena—you saw them so seldom and were in them simply never! But old Lady Anglish supported the old man with the side whiskers who drove this one, yes, and his whole family! As she explained to Rosalind when they were all settled inside, it wasn't only that she had never been in a motor-car yet and never would, but that Mussel's grandchildren were the sweetest children, and that when she went to see them she knew that there were at least half a dozen human beings in the world who were glad to welcome her.

More people, Rosalind reflected as the cab crept like a sleep-walker over the snow, would welcome her if she looked less odd and didn't talk so continuously about herself and her plans. Her oddness was interesting seen at a dispassionate distance, but embarrassing as soon as you were in any way responsible for it. However, to-night the cab was positively a blessing. Otherwise they must have taken an omnibus. This disgusting poverty, this loathsome compelling of every reluctant penny to do its uttermost "bit"! And then the beauty of the night seen very dimly through the frost-dimmed panes of the cab drew Rosalind from those sordid thoughts. She was always easily drawn by any beauty—or by any ugliness for the matter of that. Life was what she wanted—to savour it, fully, utterly, to the last intensity, never to miss a thing, never to escape an experience, that would be the ecstasy of enjoyment—if it were not for morals and other people's feelings. She had not, she considered, any morals herself. Nothing shocked her. She had heard the most dreadful things and had never turned a hair. Nor did she care, when she looked into it dispassionately, very much for other people's feelings. Unless she loved them. There was the rub. This love. How tiresome it was, forcing you to be considerate and unselfish and yielding when you so definitely did not wish to be! Perhaps one day when she was older she would conquer this feeling and not care for anybody, only for herself. How satisfying that state would be!