Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/79

 might hop from branch to branch on a favourite tree.

To Campaspe, then, with the rich resources of her imagination constantly at her command, there existed slight possibility of dulness. There might spread before her fallow periods in which nothing, of the many external actions and accidents that served to capture her willing attention, occurred, but it was during these periods that she took occasion to put her mental house in order, to shake out of her brain whatever lingering superstitions or inhibitions had come to her like trailing clouds of responsibility out of the dark backward and abysm of time.

She was aware of a distinct sensation that she had returned to a New York which was a little different from the New York to which she had become accustomed during the years immediately succeeding the war. People were tiring of one another, tiring of themselves, tiring of doing the same thing. Deeds of violence were prevalent, vicious tongues more active: the world had nerves again, nerves and problems, a state of affairs which she had once been simple enough to believe the war had exhausted for all time. It was curious to find even placid Laura facing a problem, and Campaspe wondered, half-amused, if Laura would consult a psychanalyst regarding her enigma, as was the current fashion, rather than a priest. Laura, who had always played so safe, had, it appeared, hatched