"I wonder if Grandmother believes all that," speculated Gerda, who did. Then she said aloud, "Grandmother" (that was what Gerda and Kay called her, distinguishing her thus from Great-Grandmama), "tea's ready." Mrs. Hilary woke with a start. "The Breath of Life" fell on the floor with a bang. Mrs. Hilary looked up and saw Gerda and blushed. "I've been asleep.... I took up this ridiculous book of yours to look at. The most absurd stuff.... How can you children muddle your minds with it? Besides, it isn't at all a _nice_ book for you, my child. I came on several very queer things...." But the candid innocence of Gerda's wide blue eyes on hers transcended "nice" and "not nice."... You might as well talk like that to a wood anemone, or a wild rabbit.... If her grandmother had only known, Gerda at twenty had discussed things which Mrs. Hilary, in all her sixty-three years, had never heard mentioned. Gerda knew of things of which Mrs. Hilary would have indignantly and sincerely denied the existence. Gerda's young mind was a cess-pool, a clear little dew-pond, according to how you looked at it. Gerda and Gerda's friends knew no inhibitions of speech or thought. They believed that the truth would make them free, and the truth about life is, from some points of view, a squalid and gross thing. But better look it in the face, thought Gerda and her contemporaries, than pretend it isn't there, as elderly people do. "I don't want you to pretend anything isn't there, darling," Neville, between the two generations, had said to Gerda once. "Only it seems to me that some of you children have one particular kind of truth too heavily on your minds. It seems to block the world for you." "You mean sex," Gerda had told her, bluntly. "Well, it runs all through life, mother. What's the use of hiding from it? The only way to get even with it is to face it. And _use_ it." "Face it and use it by all means. All I meant was, it's a question of emphasis. There _are_ other things...." Of course Gerda knew that. There was drawing, and poetry, and beauty, and dancing, and swimming, and music, and politics, and economics. Of course there were other things; no doubt about that. They were like songs, like colour, like sunrise, like flowers, these other things. But the basis of life was the desire of the male for the female and of the female for the male. And this had been warped and smothered and talked down and made a furtive, shameful thing, and it must be brought out into the day.... Neville smiled to hear all this tripping sweetly off Gerda's lips. "All right, darling, don't mind me. Go ahead and bring it out into the day, if you think the subject really needs more airing than it already gets. I should have thought myself it got lots, and always had."