Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/46

 wash properly, and I've never heard of a vagabond who carried a cake of soap with him."

"I do," she laughed, then after a few moments' pause she added, "You reason and analyse too much for the open road. I being a woman accept all, and glory in my inconsistencies."

"And incidentally get as many baths, hot or cold, as you want."

She nodded.

"No," he continued, "the nomadic habit gets you dubbed a dangerous lunatic. I suppose I'm a dangerous lunatic, because I cannot find content in a dinner, a dance, or a crush, with a month's holiday in the summer and, as my cousin would put it, working like a fountain from ten till four."

"But does it really matter what we do, provided we can justify it to ourselves?" She looked up at him eagerly.

"Would not the Philistines regard that as a dangerous philosophy?"

"I don't think I should ever want to run away from things," she said dreamily; "that is monastic. It has always seemed to me a much greater achievement to live your own life in the midst of uncongenial or unsympathetic surroundings."

"You don't know Aunt Caroline and the Foreign Office," said Beresford grimly.

"Oh! but," said the girl, "my auntie's just as conventional as can be. You see," she continued seriously, "to be an idealist you must be unconscious of being one. Do you understand what I mean?"