in July to stay with them. While she was there, Barry
Briscoe, who was helping with a W.E.A. summer school at Haslemere, would
come over on Sundays and spend the day with them. Not even the rains of
July 1920 made Barry weary or depressed. His eyes were bright behind his
glasses; his hands were usually full of papers, committee reports,
agenda, and the other foods he fed on, unsatiated and unabashed. Barry
was splendid. What ardour, what enthusiasm, burning like beacons in a
wrecked world! So wrecked a world that all but the very best and the very
worst had given it up as a bad job; the best because they hoped on, hoped
ever, the worst because of the pickings that fall to such as they out of
the collapsing ruins. But Barry, from the very heart of the ruin, would
cry "Here is what we must do," and his eyes would gleam with faith and
resolution, and he would form a committee and act. And when he saw how
the committee failed, as committees will, and how little good it all was,
he would laugh ruefully and try something else. Barry, as he would tell
you frankly--if you enquired, not otherwise,--believed in God. He was the
son of a famous Quaker philanthropist, and had been brought up to see
good works done and even garden cities built. I am aware that this must
prejudice many people against Barry; and indeed many people were annoyed
by certain aspects of him. But, as he was intellectually brilliant and
personally attractive, these people were as a rule ready to overlook what
they called the Quaker oats. Nan, who overlooked nothing, was frankly at
war with him on some points, and he with her. Nan, cynical, clear-eyed,
selfish and blase, cared nothing for the salvaging of what remained of
the world out of the wreck, nothing for the I.L.P., less than nothing for
garden cities, philanthropy, the W.E.A., and God. And committees she
detested. Take them all away, and there remained Barry Briscoe, and for
him she did not care nothing.

It was the oddest friendship, thought Neville, observing how, when Barry
was there, all Nan's perversities and moods fell away, leaving her as
agreeable as he. Her keen and ironic intelligence met his, and they so
understood each other that they finished each other's sentences, and
others present could only with difficulty keep up with them. Neville
believed them to be in love, but did not know whether they had ever
informed one another of the fact. They might still be pretending to
one another that t