The Happy Garden 



distance, and there is sorrow in her eyes, sorrow 

 because she finds more beauty in the scene than 

 is comfortable to her, and she wants to share it and 

 hardly dares : she just touches me with her hand, 

 and with a fearful glance at Elisabeth, who is 

 behaving like a rowdy undergraduate, she says in 

 a whisper : " It is very pretty." 



That wipes out Elisabeth's advantage. The 

 digression is proving valuable. It is possible that 

 before we are through with it, Jane will begin to 

 peck her way out of her shell, and perhaps in the 

 end the hungry little inward Jane starved by 

 John's perpetual Game, will light up her heart 

 and sing and — live. Perhaps for one tiny morsel 

 of a second she will not be afraid of happiness. 



Who knows ? 



But the Social Conscience, which is Elisabeth, 

 must first be squashed. 



There is so much to see, so much to enjoy, but 

 Elisabeth hangs a curtain of books and figures, and 

 what she calls " facts " between herself and the 

 world. She is humane without being human, and 

 almost hysterically resents the humanity in Jane. 

 The light of the world is not to her the light of 

 the sun, but the light of' the brains of Messrs. Zola, 

 Sidney Webb, Nietzsche, Bernard Shaw and Co. 

 If it were the light of her own brain one could 



no 



