Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/118

 she bring this young man to his senses, effect a salutary disillusion, create a realistic flower-pot in which his obviously fine qualities might blossom? Even as she considered the possibility of this ostensibly altruistic move, she was watching herself at the same time with some cynical amusement, wondering just how far she might become implicated in this drama of sympathy without breaking down her own defences, defences which, up to the present, had served her in every emergency. They had consisted in the raising of several essential bars between herself and those who came into social contact with her. She had, through this method, achieved comparative security. It had saved her the pain of doubt. She had, through its offices, enjoyed her life and she had permitted others to enjoy theirs in their fashion. She had constructed her career from the stones of disillusion: they made a strong fortress. Was she, urged by an inexplicable feeling of tenderness, lowering a drawbridge over the deep moat which separated her from the plain of suffering. Was she. . . ?

Campaspe turned to the table by her side and lifted a small volume. The world of T. F. Powys's peasants, low, mean, despicable, mechanical, material, tawdry, inflamed with hatred and greed and lust, over which hovered a nebulous power that might conceivably save, and yet always withheld a saving hand, had hitherto been sufficiently expressive to her of the world in general. She opened