The superman preoccupied her now and then. He was a good subject for speculation because imponderable and inexistent. The nearest approach she could think of was a cross between an efficient colonial governor and a latter-day prophet. She believed quite sincerely that the day must come when children of the light must be born, capable of ruling and of keeping the law. She saw very well too that their production did not lie with an effete aristocracy any more than with a dirty and drunken democracy; probably they would be neo-plutocrats, men full of ambition, lusting for power and yet imbued with a spirit of icy justice. Her earliest tendency had been towards an idealistic socialism. Burning with her own wrongs and touched by the angelic wing of sympathy, she had seen in the communisation of wealth the only means of curbing the evils it had hitherto wrought. Further observation showed her however that an idealism of this kind would not lead the world speedily into a peaceful haven. She saw too well that covetousness was still lurking snakelike in the bosom of man, ready to rear its ugly head and strike at any hand. Thus she was not surprised to see the chaos which reigned among socialists, their intriguing, their jealousies, their unending dissensions, their apostacies. This did not throw her back into the stereotyped philosophy of individualism; for she could not help seeing that the system of modern life was absurd, stupidly wasteful above all of time, labour and wealth. To apply Nietzscheism to socialism was, however, beyond her; to reconcile the two doctrines which apparently conflict and really only overlap was a task too difficult for a brain which had lain fallow for twenty-five years. But she dimly felt that Nietzscheism did not mean a glorified imperialism, but a worship of intellectual efficiency and the stringent morality of _noblesse oblige_.