_Vivie_: "Oh _no_! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't, he simply couldn't be. I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam Gardner, any more than George Crofts was. I believe it was a young Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met in Belgium the year before I was born. If I ever find out more I will tell you. _You_ haven't seen 'Soapy Sam,' the Vicar of Woodcote, or that beast, George Crofts; but if you _had_, you'd be as sure as I am that neither of them was _my_ father--thank goodness! As to Frank--yes--for a short time I _was_ fond of him--till I learnt about my mother's 'profession.' It was rather a silly sort of fondness. He was two years younger than I; I suppose my feeling for him was half motherly ... I neither encouraged him nor did I repel him. I think I was experimenting ... I rather wanted to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man. Frank was a nice creature, so far as a man can be. But all those horrid revelations that broke up our summer stay at Haslemere four years ago--when I ran away to you--gave me an utter disgust for marriage. And what a life mine would have been if I had married him then; or after he went out to South Africa! _Ghastly_! Want of money would have made us hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects, free from money anxieties--dearest, dearest Norie--I can't thank you enough. No, I'm not going to be sentimental--the New Woman is never that. I'm going to get the tea ready; and after we've had tea on the balcony we really must go into business matters. Your being away so much the last fortnight, things have accumulated that I did not like to decide for myself..." _Norie_ (speaking rather louder as Vivie is now busy in the adjoining roomlet, boiling the kettle on the gas stove and preparing the tea): "Yes. And I've got _lots_ to talk over with you. All sorts of plans have come into my head. I don't know whether I have been eating anything more than usually brain stimulating--everything has a physical basis--but I have come back from this scattered holiday full of new ideas." Presently they are seated on camp-stools sipping tea, eating strawberries and cakes, under the striped sun-blind. _Norie_ continues: "Do you remember Beryl Clarges at Newnham?" _Vivie_: "Yes--the pretty girl--short, curly hair, brown eyes, rather full lips, good at mathematics--hockey ... purposely shocked you by her outspokenness--well?"