Nordenholt himself contributed but little to the conversation on these excursions. Sometimes he brought with him one of his numerous experts and spent the time in technical discussions; but usually he occupied the back seat of the car alone, lost in his thoughts and plans, while I drove and Miss Huntingtower sat beside me. As our time was limited, and we wished to avoid the city as much as possible, our routes were mainly those to the west, by the Kilpatrick Hills or the Campsies. We never pushed farther afield, as Nordenholt had forbidden me to go outside the boundaries of the Nitrogen Area. I think he was afraid of what she might see by the roadside if we passed the frontier. Even during these few short afternoons, I came to know her better. Somehow I had got the impression that she was graver than her years justified; but I found that in this estimate I was mistaken. She was sobered by the responsibility of her work, but underneath this she seemed to have a natural craving for the enjoyment of life, and a capacity for making the best of things which was suited to my own mood. She was quite unaffected; I never found her posing in any way. Whether she chattered nonsense--and I believe both of us did that at times--or was discussing the future, she gave me the impression of being perfectly natural. We used to make all sorts of plans for the future of the world, once the danger was past; half-trivial, half-serious schemes which somehow took on an air of fairy-tale reality. “When I am Queen, I will set such and such a grievance right”; “In the first year of my Presidency, I will publish an edict forbidding so and so.” Between us, on these drives, we planned a fairy kingdom in the future, a new Garden of the Hesperides, a dream-built Thelema of sunlit walls and towers and pleasure-grounds wherein might dwell the coming generations of men. The future! Somehow that was always with us. Less and less did we go backward into the past. That world was over, never to return; but the years still to come gave us full scope for our fancies and to them we turned with eager eyes. The diversion grew upon us as time went on. It was always spontaneous, for our work gave neither of us an opportunity for thinking out details; and each afternoon brought its fresh store of improvisations. Through it all, she was the dreamer of dreams; it was my part to throw her visions into a practically attainable form: and gradually, out of it all, there arose a fabric of phantasy which yet had its foundations in the solid earth. It took form; we could walk its streets in reverie and pace its lawns. And gradually that land of Faerie came to be peopled with inhabitants, mere phantasms at first, but growing ever more real as we talked of them between ourselves. Half in jest and half in earnest we created them, and soon they twined themselves about our hearts. Children of our brain, they were; dearer than any earthly offspring, for from them we need fear no disappointments.