nineteenth-century uncritical Herbert Spencer sense, an air that

only began to disappear when you thought them over again in terms of

actuality and the people one knew…

At the Baileys' one always seemed to be getting one's hands on the

very strings that guided the world. You heard legislation projected

to affect this "type" and that; statistics marched by you with sin

and shame and injustice and misery reduced to quite manageable

percentages, you found men who were to frame or amend bills in grave

and intimate exchange with Bailey's omniscience, you heard Altiora

canvassing approaching resignations and possible appointments that

might make or mar a revolution in administrative methods, and doing

it with a vigorous directness that manifestly swayed the decision;

and you felt you were in a sort of signal box with levers all about

you, and the world outside there, albeit a little dark and

mysterious beyond the window, running on its lines in ready

obedience to these unhesitating lights, true and steady to trim

termini.

And then with all this administrative fizzle, this pseudo-scientific

administrative chatter, dying away in your head, out you went into

the limitless grimy chaos of London streets and squares, roads and

avenues lined with teeming houses, each larger than the Chambers

Street house and at least equally alive, you saw the chaotic clamour

of hoardings, the jumble of traffic, the coming and going of

mysterious myriads, you heard the rumble of traffic like the noise

of a torrent; a vague incessant murmur of cries and voices, wanton

crimes and accidents bawled at you from the placards; imperative

unaccountable fashions swaggered triumphant in dazzling windows of

the shops; and you found yourself swaying back to the opposite

conviction that the huge formlessspirit of the world it was that

held the strings and danced the puppets on the Bailey stage…

Under the lamps you were jostled by people like my Staffordshire

uncle out for a spree, you saw shy youths conversing with

prostitutes, you passed young lovers pairing with an entire

disregard of the social suitability of the "types" they might blend

or create, you saw men leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you

knew for the "type" that will charge with fixed bayonets into the

face of death, and you found yourself unable to imagine little

Bailey achieving either drunkenness or the careless defiance of

annihilation. You realised that quite a lot of types were

underrepresented in Chambers Street, that feral and obscure and

altogether monstrous forces must be at work, as yet altogether

unassimilated by those neat administrative reorganisations.

5

Altiora, I remember, preluded Margaret's reappearance by announcing

her as a "new type."

I was accustomed to go early to the Baileys' dinners in those days,

for a preliminary gossip with Altiora in front of her drawing-room

fire. One got her alone, and that early arrival was a little sign

of appreciation she valued. She had every woman's need of followers

and servants.

"I'm going to send you down to-night," she said, "with a very

interesting type indeed-one of the new generation of serious gals.

Middle-class origin-and quite well off. Rich in fact. Her step-

father was a solicitor and something of an ENTREPRENEUR towards the

end, I fancy-in the Black Country. There was a little brother

died, and she's lost her mother quite recently. Quite on her own,

so to speak. She's never been out into society very much, and

doesn't seem really very anxious to go… Not exactly an

intellectual person, you know, but quiet, and great force of

character. Came up to London on her own and came to us-someone had

told her we were the sort of people to advise her-to ask what to

do. I'm sure she'll interest you."

"What CAN people of that sort do?" I asked. "Is she capable of

investigation?"

Altiora compressed her lips and shook her head. She always did

shake her head when you asked that of anyone.

"Of course what she ought to do," said Altiora, with her silk dress

pulled back from her knee before the fire, and with a lift of her

voice towards a chuckle at her daring way of putting things, "is to

marry a member of Parliament and see he does his work…

Perhaps she will. It's a very exceptional gal who can do anything

by herself-quite exceptional. The more serious they are-without

being exceptional-the more we want them to marry."

Her exposition was truncated by the entry of the type in question.

"Well!" cried Altiora turning, and with a high note of welcome,

"HERE you are!"

Margaret had gained in dignity and prettiness by the lapse of five

years, and she was now very beautifully and richly and simply

dressed. Her fair hair had been done in some way that made it seem

softer and more abundant than it was in my memory, and a gleam of

purple velvet-set diamonds showed amidst its mist of little golden

and brown lines. Her dress was of white and violet, the last trace

of mourning for her mother, and confessed the gracious droop of her

tall and slender body. She did not suggest Staffordshire at all,

and I was puzzled for a moment to think where I had met her. Her

sweetly shaped mouth with the slight obliquity of the lip and the