Oh _no_! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't,
he simply couldn't be. I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam
Gardner, any more than George Crofts was. I believe it was a young
Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met
in Belgium the year before I was born. If I ever find out more I
will tell you. _You_ haven't seen 'Soapy Sam,' the Vicar of
Woodcote, or that beast, George Crofts; but if you _had_, you'd be
as sure as I am that neither of them was _my_ father--thank
goodness! As to Frank--yes--for a short time I _was_ fond of
him--till I learnt about my mother's 'profession.' It was rather a
silly sort of fondness. He was two years younger than I; I suppose
my feeling for him was half motherly ... I neither encouraged him
nor did I repel him. I think I was experimenting ... I rather wanted
to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man. Frank was a nice
creature, so far as a man can be. But all those horrid revelations
that broke up our summer stay at Haslemere four years ago--when I
ran away to you--gave me an utter disgust for marriage. And what a
life mine would have been if I had married him then; or after he
went out to South Africa! _Ghastly_! Want of money would have made
us hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become
patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he
would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by
marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him
while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have
led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects,
free from money anxieties--dearest, dearest Norie--I can't thank you
enough. No, I'm not going to be sentimental--the New Woman is never
that. I'm going to get the tea ready; and after we've had tea on the
balcony we really must go into business matters. Your being away so
much the last fortnight, things have accumulated that I did not like
to decide for myself..."

_Norie_ (speaking rather louder as Vivie is now busy in the
adjoining roomlet, boiling the kettle on the gas stove and preparing
the tea): "Yes. And I've got _lots_ to talk over with you. All sorts
of plans have come into my head. I don't know whether I have been
eating anything more than usually brain stimulating--everything has
a physical basis--but I have come back from this scattered holiday
full of new ideas."

Presently they are seated on camp-stools