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 door. Camping expeditions were a serious means to some explorative end; one slept on the hard ground under a raincoat simply because there was nothing else to sleep on, and eagerly looked forward to doing it again. Men and women whom one would once have sent down to the kitchen for a cup of tea were now one's convives. And far from losing caste on this level, one acquired a useful perspective of society and a new conception of one's identity. Association with a girl like Pearl Beatty, for instance, not only opened one's eyes at last to some blunt facts about one's own nature, but also furnished the clue to scandals concerning which one had been stupidly supercilious in the days when life consisted in the automatic fulfilment of projects announced beforehand on pieces of cardboard.

Yet for the first time in a dozen years she was not sure of herself. So far she had been loyal in thought as well as deed, but the present inventory of herself revealed claims for which she had also little rebellious gusts of loyalty. Louise herself counted for something in this development, since however much one might deprecate Louise's bold convictions, one couldn't deny that they were often ingratiating. "It's more honorable to hoist your own sail and sail straight on a reef than it is to be towed forever!" When Louise tossed off remarks of that sort one was tempted to lengths of experiment that one would once have drastically disapproved. Louise's philosophy might end by producing inedible