“And having learned that respectable journalism has no use for brains, you come to me,” he answered her. “What do you think you can do?” She concluded by giving Joan a hug, accompanied by a sloppy but heartfelt kiss.!

She laughed. But the next moment she was serious. She saw the London of the future. Not the vision popular just then: a soaring whirl of machinery in motion, of moving pavements and flying omnibuses; of screaming gramophones and standardized “homes”: a city where Electricity was King and man its soulless slave. But a city of peace, of restful spaces, of leisured men and women; a city of fine streets and pleasant houses, where each could live his own life, learning freedom, individuality; a city of noble schools; of workshops that should be worthy of labour, filled with light and air; smoke and filth driven from the land: science, no longer bound to commercialism, having discovered cleaner forces; a city of gay playgrounds where children should learn laughter; of leafy walks where the creatures of the wood and field should be as welcome guests helping to teach sympathy and kindliness: a city of music, of colour, of gladness. Beauty worshipped as religion; ugliness banished as a sin: no ugly slums, no ugly cruelty, no slatternly women and brutalized men, no ugly, sobbing children; no ugly vice flaunting in every highway its insult to humanity: a city clad in beauty as with a living garment where God should walk with man.

“And suppose she repeats her mother’s experience,” suggested Joan. CHAPTER X “Now, none of that,” he said severely. “It’s no good your thinking of me. I’m wedded to my art. We are talking about Mr. Halliday.”