Ivy said, "Don't you worry, my child. No Minister'll ever trouble _you_ to go out with him. As for Chester, I should think he'd have you executed after one talk; he's great on ridding the world of the mentally deficient." But what she was thinking was, "How fearfully interesting if there is anything between them." She wondered what the other people at the office thought about it, or if they had ever thought about it at all. CHAPTER VIII ON FIXED HEARTS AND CHANGING SCENES 1 To Kitty it was manifest that the time had come for a change of employment. Such times came frequently in her life; often merely because she got bored, yawned, wanted a change, heard life summoning her to fresh woods and pastures new, and obeyed the call. Many occupations she had thus thrown up lightly; this is one reason why those who regard life as a variety entertainment do not really get on; they forget that life is real, life is earnest, and departing leave behind them no footprints on the sands of time. They do not make a career; they do not make good; they do not, in the long run, even make much money, though that rolls in by fits and starts, and at times plentifully. They do not so much hide their talents in napkins as play ball with them. This is as much as to say that it was not to Kitty Grammont the effort and the wrench that it would have been to many people to contemplate a change of avocation. And it certainly seemed desirable. Chester had said, "We needn't meet"; but the fact remained that when two people who love each other work in the same building, however remote their spheres, they disturb each other, are conscious of each other's nearness. And Chester's presence pervaded the whole Ministry; he had stamped himself everywhere; there was no getting away from him. His name was constantly on the lips and on the pens of his subordinates, and clicked forth from every typewriter; you could not so much as write an official letter without beginning "I am directed by the Minister of Brains to state," and signing it "for the Minister of Brains." Besides which, he was to be seen going out and coming in, to be met in passages and lifts, to be observed taking his food in the canteen, and his Personal Assistant demanded continual attention to him on the telephone. No, there was no getting away from the Minister. And that meant no peace of mind, none of the old careless light-hearted living and working; nothing but a continual, disturbing, restless, aching want. Kitty had no intention of facing this, so she told Vernon Prideaux that when she found another job she was going to leave. He looked at her in annoyance and dismay, and said, "Good lord, why?" Kitty said, "I'm bored. I want a change. I'm tired of working for this autocratic government. I want something with more variety in it, and more soul--a travelling circus, or a companionship to a rich American seeing the world; or any old thing, so long as it amuses me."