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She supposed that if she had spent her married life in head work, her head would never have lost the trick of it. But she hadn't. She had spent it on Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and the interesting, amusing life led by the wife of a man in Rodney's position, which had brought her always into contact with people and ideas.
One of us has got either to change his principles her principles, I mean or to be false to them. Or else, apparently, there can be nothing doing between you and me. That's the position, isn't it?" Gerda nodded, her mouth full of apple. "It's very awkward," Barry continued, "my having fallen in love with you. I had not taken your probable views on sociology into account.
Here again the dreams overtook them, but they flitted by so quickly that Gerda could not distinguish them. The apartments became one more beautiful than the other; they were enough to bewilder anybody. They now reached the bedroom. The ceiling was like a great palm with crystal leaves, and in the middle of the room two beds, each like a lily hung from a golden stem.
Neville's voice trailed drowsily away. Polygamy. Sex. Free Love. Love in chains. The children seemed so often to be discussing these. Just as, twenty years ago, she and her friends had seemed always to be discussing the Limitations of Personality, the Ethics of Friendship, and the Nature, if any, of God. This last was to Kay and Gerda too hypothetical to be a stimulating theme.
I have heard the bay of those terrible hounds more than once indeed, but I have seen naught, and round our hall is no unrest. In the sunshine of next day Gerda would hear what had become of Arnkel, supposing that he was kept safely somewhere. I think that the hurt to me, small as it was, angered her against him more than the wrongs he had done to herself. "He is dead," I told her.
One day while she was looking at the hat of the old woman painted with flowers, the most beautiful of them all seemed to her to be a rose. The old woman had forgotten to take it from her hat when she made the others vanish in the earth. But so it is when one's thoughts are not collected. "What!" said Gerda.
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."
The guards in silver and the footmen in gold would not allow it. But don't cry! You shall get in all right. My sweetheart knows a little back-stairs which leads to the sleeping-room, and she knows where to find the key. They went into the garden, and when the lights in the palace were put out one after the other, the crow led Gerda to a back-door.
Barry caught it just in time, as he was being swung on a wave outwards, and pulled himself within grip of the rock, and in another moment he lay beside her, and between them they hauled up Gerda. Gerda gasped "Kay," and they saw him struggling twenty yards behind. "Can you do it?" Barry shouted to him, and Kay grinned back. "Let you know presently.... Oh yes, I'm all right. Getting on fine."
All the ladies of the court, with their attendants and attendants' attendants, and all the cavaliers, with their gentlemen and gentlemen's gentlemen, stood round; and the nearer they stood to the door, the prouder they looked. It was hardly possible to look at the gentleman's gentleman, so very haughtily did he stand in the doorway." "It must have been terrible," said little Gerda.
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