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Hester and her generation; they would be self-disciplined; and she saw their valour, their integrity, and their peril. A new age was always perilous. It was as though the fostering epoch of the plant-consciousness were over and the human flower, its product, walked away on its feet, nourished by no sap from below and sustained only by some new element in the surrounding atmosphere of which newly evolved faculties were for the first time aware. ‘It may work; it may work;—in ways we can’t conceive of,’ Monica thought, standing there, her heart strangely held by pity and understanding. ‘There may be enough to grow on—since they feel it. It will be a world of walking flowers. Dangerous; but they accept danger.’

She turned away and went softly up the stairs. Robin’s day-nursery was in front, facing south; Hester had chosen the best bedroom for her child. She passed that, glancing in at its sunny order, and went down the little passage that led, at the other side of the house, to Clive and Hester’s room. She stood for a moment before the door and listened hearing no sound; then she tapped, very softly, and Clive’s weary voice said: ‘Come in.’

Monica had not seen the room since her first visit to the completed Crofts, and, as she glanced at it,