himself with them, while, presumably, expecting her to identify herself with the class from which he had sprung, as though, gradually, she would have portentous new duties to undertake.
She couldn't help dreading the prospect. Not that she shrank from duties,—on the contrary; it was the menacing gentility of it all that subdued her. When Keble had first come to them, disgusted with the old order, he had persuaded her that the younger generation,—his English generation,—had learned an epoch-making lesson, that it had earned its right to ignore tradition and to build the future according to its own iconoclastic logic. He had determined to create his own life, rather than passively accept the life that had been awaiting him over there since birth. She had thrilled with pride at having been chosen partner in such a daring scheme. Only to find that, in insidious ways, perhaps unconsciously, Keble was buttressing himself with the paraphernalia of the old order which he professed to repudiate. She could love Keble without gloating over his blue prints and his catalogues of prize cattle, his nineteenth century poets, and his eighteenth century courtliness. The natives might gape at her luxurious bathroom fixtures and other marvels that were beginning to arrive in packing-cases at the Witney railway station. She had almost no possessive instinct, and certainly no ambition to be mistress of the finest estate in the province. Her most clearly defined ambition was to be useful,—useful to herself, and thereby, in some
