w the difficulties
in your way--all sorts of difficulties. But when I think just how you
stand at the very centre of the moulding forces in these changes...."

He dropped into an eloquent silence.

Lady Harman looked thoughtfully at the sunlight under the trees.

"You think," she said, "that it comes to as much as all this."

"More," said Mr. Brumley.

"I was frightened before. _Now_----You make me feel as though someone
had put the wheel of a motor car in my hand, started it and told me to
steer...."

Sec.7

Lady Harman went home from that talk in a taxi, and on the way she
passed the building operations in Kensington Road. A few weeks ago it
had been a mere dusty field of operation for the house-wreckers; now its
walls were already rising to the second storey. She realized how swiftly
nowadays the search for wisdom can be outstripped by reinforced
concrete.

Sec.8

It was only by slow degrees and rather in the absence of a more
commanding interest than through any invincible quality in their appeal
to her mind that these Hostels became in the next three years the grave
occupation of Lady Harman's thoughts and energies. She yielded to them
reluctantly. For a long time she wanted to look over them and past them
and discover something--she did not know what--something high and
domineering to which it would be easy to give herself. It was difficult
to give herself to the Hostels. In that Mr. Brumley, actuated by a
mixture of more or less admirable motives, did his best to assist her.
These Hostels alone he thought could give them something upon which they
could meet, give them a common interest and him a method of service and
companionship. It threw the qualities of duty and justification over
their more or less furtive meetings, their little expeditions together,
their quiet frequent association.

Together they made studies of the Girls' Clubs which are scattered about
London, supplementary homes that have in such places as Walworth and
Soho worked small miracles of civilization. These institutions appealed
to a lower social level than the one their Hostels were to touch, but
they had been organized by capable and understanding minds and Lady
Harman found in one or two of their evening dances and in the lunch she
shared one morning with a row of cheerful young factory girls from Soho
just that quality of concrete realization for which her mind hungered.
Then Mr. Brumley took her once or twice for evening