failed there would be hands held out to shelter her decline. But the vision never held her for more than a moment. There was something in the thought of such pure personal sentiment that gave her a feeling of treachery towards the children. Mentally she flung them out and off, made them stand upright and estranged. She could not give them personal love. She did not want to; nor to be entangled with them. They were going to grow up into North London women, most of them loudly scorning everything that was not materially profitable; these would remember her with pity--amusement. A few would escape. These would remember her at strange moments that were coming for them, moments when they would recognise the beauty of things like ‘the Psalm of Life’ that she had induced them to memorise without understanding it. This morning a sense of their softness and helplessness went to her heart. She had taught them so little. But she had forced them to be impersonal. Almost savagely she had done that. She had never taken them by a trick.... 4 And now they were going to be Julia’s children. Julia would teach them--alone there in the room with them, filling the room for them--in her own way.... There would be no more talk about general ideas.... She would have to keep on the “object” lessons, because the Pernes had been so pleased with the idea and the children had liked them. There would still be those moments, with balls for the solar system and a candle for the sun, and the blinds down. But there would not be anything like that instant when all the eyes round the table did nothing but watch the movement of a shadow on a ball ... the relief afterwards, the happiness and the moment of intense love in the room--never to be forgotten, all of them knowing each other, all their differences gone away, even the clever watchful eyes of the cheating little Jewess, real and unconscious for a moment. Julia would be watching the children as much as the shadow, and the children would never quite forget Julia. She would get to know a great deal about the children, but there would be no reverence for big cold outside things. She would teach them to be kind. “Little dorlings.” She thought all children were darlings and talked to them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring way. If one or two were not, it was the fault of the way they were treated, something in the ‘English’ way of dealing with them. Nearly all the elder girls she disapproved of, they were no longer children--they were English. She was full of contempt and indignant laughter for them, and of pity for the ‘wee things’ who were growing up. Yet she got on with them all and had the secret of managing them without letting them see her feelings.