Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/256

244 and compelled and limited by circumstances they can never master. But we, if we have tasks, have tasks of our own choosing. We may not like the world, but anyhow we are free to do our best to alter it. If I were a clerk in Hoxton and you were a city typist, then we might swear.”

“It was you who swore,” smiled Miss Grammont.

“It’s the thought of that clerk in Hoxton and that city typist who really keep me at my work. Any smacking ought to come from them. I couldn’t do less than I do in the face of their helplessness. Nevertheless a day will come—through what we do and what we refrain from doing—when there will be no bound and limited clerks in Hoxton and no captive typists in the city. And nobody at all to consider.”

“According to the prophet Martineau,” said Miss Grammont.

“And then you and I must contrive to be born again.”

“Heighho!” cried Miss Grammont. “A thousand years ahead! When fathers are civilized. When all these phanton [sic] people who intervene on your side—no! I don’t want to know anything about them, but I know of them by instinct—when they also don’t matter.”

“Then you and I can have things out with each other—thoroughly,” said Sir Richmond, with a