initiative anywhere, and what there is, is soon snuffed out by smug, self-sufficient common-place; the ball of civilisation is refusing to be pushed further up hill, and gives signs of rolling back upon its supporters. I see all this as I did not see it before I came to town and had the benefit of conversation about London life with Friga, who has been accustomed, much against her will, to the throng of it. Altogether, I have a sense of being stifled by the moral atmosphere, and a presentiment that the present state of things cannot last long. We shall have an explosion—not dynamite—but revolution.’
‘It may not suit your wild originality, Lesbie dear,’ said her mother, ‘that society should be coming to its senses, and that there should be a reaction in favour of womanliness of the old sort; but that is the light in which the circumstances which displease you appear to old fogies like your aunt and me.’
‘Pray, mamma,’ asked Lesbia, in a cold, hard tone, ‘do you remember the Dream?’
The young girl put this unwonted question to her mother in a moment of uncontrollable irritation; and no sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted them. Mrs Newman turned deadly pale, and the newspaper, which she had taken up to glance at, fell on the carpet, as she rested both her hands on the table and gazed out of window.
‘Ah, yes, indeed I do, Lesbie,’ she said at last sadly. ‘God knows in what shape the catastrophe is to come, but it cannot be for nothing that I listened in my trance to the tremendous thunder rolling and rattling, and saw that dreadful hillside spattered with blood. And to think that you should have seen a place in Ireland which answers to it exactly! I’m sure we may well pray, ‘From battle, murder, and sudden death, good Lord, deliver us.’’
‘Yes; well, it can’t be helped,’ said Mr Bristley, rising,
