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. He was explaining to her things about the air service. It seemed he had had experience in flying—some relation of his with whom he had spent a holiday last summer.!

“You will find yourself expensive to dress,” she told her, “cheap things won’t go well on you; and it would be madness, even from a business point of view, for you not to make the best of yourself.” Joan was making herself a cup of tea when there came a tap at the door. It was Mrs. Phillips.

“How do you mean ‘in his way’?” demanded Joan. It certainly, if Froude was to be trusted, could not have been the orthodox way. Even the shopman wavered. Joan pressed her advantage; directed Mrs. Phillips’s attention to something a little less awful. Mrs. Phillips yielded. “I’m so awfully sorry,” he said. “I’ve been talking to you as if you were a public meeting. I’m afraid I’m more used to them than I am to women. Please forgive me.”