to marriage and
class and conduct, and that these agreements and conclusions were
admirably stated in the Book of Common Prayer, and most ably and
decorously advocated from the pulpit of St. John's. She would have said
that she believed the agreements and conclusions because of the Prayer
Book, but in fact she had primarily given in her allegiance to a social
system, and supported the Prayer Book because of its support of that.
Once a month she repeated the Nicene Creed, but only because, in the
nature of things, the Nicene Creed was given her once a month to repeat,
and she never really conceived that people might worry strenuously about
it, any more than she did. Being an intelligent girl, she knew, of
course, that people did, and occasionally preachers occupied the pulpit
of St. John's who were apparently quite anxious that she and the rest
of the congregation should understand that it meant this and not that,
or that and not this, according to the particular enthusiasm of the
clergyman of the moment. Sentence by sentence she more or less understood
what these gentlemen keenly urged upon her; as a whole she understood
nothing. She was far too much the child of her environment and age not
to perceive that Mr. Lloyd George's experiments in class legislation were
vastly more important.

Peter, therefore, had always been a bit of an enigma to her. As a rule
he fitted in with the scheme of things perfectly well, for he was a
gentleman, he liked nice things, and he was splendidly keen on charity
organisation and the reform of abuses on right lines. But now and again
he said and did things which perturbed her. It was as if she had
gradually become complete mistress of a house, and then had suddenly
discovered a new room into which she peeped for a minute before it was
lost to her again and the door shut. It was no Bluebeard's chamber into
which she looked; it was much more that she had a suspicion that the room
contained a live mistress who might come out one day and dispute her own
title. She could tell how Peter would act nine times out of ten; she knew
by instinct, a great deal better than he did, the conceptions that ruled
his life; but now and again he would hesitate perplexedly as if at the
thought of something that she did not understand, or act suddenly in
response to an overwhelming flood of impulse whose spring was beyond her
control or even her surmise. Women mother all their men because men are
on the whole such