for Church and State, her instinctive theory that they rested on gentility and people who were nice, was never for a moment shaken when she saw a half-starved baby of the slums.  Her heart would impel her to pity and feed the poor little baby if she could, but to correlate the creature with millions of other such babies, and those millions with the Church and State, would not occur to her.  And if Felix made an attempt to correlate them for her she would look at him and think:  ’Dear boy!  How good he is!  I do wish he wouldn’t let that line come in his forehead; it does so spoil it!’ And she would say:  “Yes, darling, I know, it’s very sad; only I’m not clever.”  And, if a Liberal government chanced to be in power, would add:  “Of course, I do think this Government is dreadful.  I must show you a sermon of the dear Bishop of Walham.  I cut it out of the ‘Daily Mystery.’  He puts things so well—­he always has such nice ideas.”

And Felix, getting up, would walk a little and sit down again too suddenly.  Then, as if entreating him to look over her want of ‘cleverness,’ she would put out a hand that, for all its whiteness, had never been idle and smooth his forehead.  It had sometimes touched him horribly to see with what despair she made attempts to follow him in his correlating efforts, and with what relief she heard him cease enough to let her say:  “Yes, dear; only, I must show you this new kind of expanding cork.  It’s simply splendid.  It bottles up everything!” And after staring at her just a moment he would acquit her of irony.  Very often after these occasions he had thought, and sometimes said:  “Mother, you’re the best Conservative I ever met.”  She would glance at him then, with a special loving doubtfulness, at a loss as to whether or no he had designed to compliment her.

When he had given her half an hour to rest he made his way to the blue corridor, where a certain room was always kept for her, who never occupied it long enough at a time to get tired of it.  She was lying on a sofa in a loose gray cashmere gown.  The windows were open, and the light breeze just moved in the folds of the chintz curtains and stirred perfume from a bowl of pinks—­her favorite flowers.  There was no bed in this bedroom, which in all respects differed from any other in Clara’s house, as though the spirit of another age and temper had marched in and dispossessed the owner.  Felix had a sensation that one was by no means all body here.  On the contrary.  There was not a trace of the body anywhere; as if some one had decided that the body was not quite nice.  No bed, no wash-stand, no chest of drawers, no wardrobe, no mirror, not even a jar of Clara’s special pot-pourri.  And Felix said: 

“This can’t be your bedroom, Mother?”

Frances Freeland answered, with a touch of deprecating quizzicality: 

“Oh yes, darling.  I must show you my arrangements.”  And she rose.  “This,” she said, “you see, goes under there, and that under here; and that again goes under this.  Then they all go under that, and then I pull this.  It’s lovely.”