Or one might be a public speaker, and get into Parliament later on, when women were admitted.  One despised Parliament, but it might be fun.

Not a permanent Civil Servant; one could not work for this ludicrous government more than temporarily, to tide over the Great Interruption.

7

So Jane looked with calm, weighing, critical eyes at life and its chances, and saw that they were not bad, for such as her.  Unless, of course, the Allies were beaten....  This contingency seemed often possible, even probable.  Jane’s faith in the ultimate winning power of numbers and wealth was at times shaken, not by the blunders of governments or the defection of valuable allies, but by the unwavering optimism of her parent’s press.

‘But,’ said Katherine Varick, ’it’s usually right, your papa’s press.  That’s the queer thing about it.  It sounds always wildly wrong, like an absurd fairy story, and all the sane, intelligent people laugh at it, and then it turns out to have been right.  Look at the way it used to say that Germany was planning war; it was mostly the stupid people who believed it, and the intelligent people who didn’t; but all the time Germany was.’

’Partly because people like daddy kept saying so, and planning to get in first.’

’Not much.  Germany was really planning:  we were only talking....  I believe in the Pinkerton press, and the other absurd presses.  They have the unthinking rightness of the fool.  Of course they have.  Because the happenings of the world are caused by people—­the mass of people—­and the Pinkerton press knows them and represents them.  Intellectual people are always thinking above the heads of the people who make movements, so they’re nearly always out.  The Pinkerton press is the people, so it gets there every time.  Potterism will outlive all the reformers and idealists.  If Potterism says we’re going to have a war, we have it; if it says we’re going to win a war, we shall win it.  “If you see it in John Bull, it is so."’

It was not often that Katherine spoke of Potterism, but when she did it was with conviction.

8

Gideon was home, wounded.  He had nearly died, but not quite.  He had lost his right foot, and would have another when the time was ripe.  He was discharged, and became, later on, assistant editor of a new weekly paper that was started.

He dined with Jane and Katherine at their flat, soon after he could get about.  He was leaner than ever, white and gaunt, and often ill-tempered from pain.  Johnny was there too, a major on leave, stuck over with coloured ribbons.  Jane called him a pot-hunter.

They laughed and talked and joked and dined.  When Gideon and Johnny had gone, and Katherine and Jane were left smoking last cigarettes and finishing the chocolates, Jane said, lazily, and without chagrin, ’How Arthur does hate us all, in these days.’

Katherine said, ‘True.  He finds us profiteers.’