Into the picture, slightly to the background, she unconsciously placed Greyson.  His tall, thin figure with its air of distinction seemed to fit in; Greyson would be very restful.  She could see his handsome, ascetic face flush with pleasure as, after the guests were gone, she would lean over the back of his chair and caress for a moment his dark, soft hair tinged here and there with grey.  He would always adore her, in that distant, undemonstrative way of his that would never be tiresome or exacting.  They would have children.  But not too many.  That would make the house noisy and distract her from her work.  They would be beautiful and clever; unless all the laws of heredity were to be set aside for her especial injury.  She would train them, shape them to be the heirs of her labour, bearing her message to the generations that should follow.

At a corner where the trams and buses stopped she lingered for a while, watching the fierce struggle; the weak and aged being pushed back time after time, hardly seeming to even resent it, regarding it as in the natural order of things.  It was so absurd, apart from the injustice, the brutality of it!  The poor, fighting among themselves!  She felt as once when watching a crowd of birds to whom she had thrown a handful of crumbs in winter time.  As if they had not enemies enough:  cats, weasels, rats, hawks, owls, the hunger and the cold.  And added to all, they must needs make the struggle yet harder for one another:  pecking at each other’s eyes, joining with one another to attack the fallen.  These tired men, these weary women, pale-faced lads and girls, why did they not organize among themselves some system that would do away with this daily warfare of each against all.  If only they could be got to grasp the fact that they were one family, bound together by suffering.  Then, and not till then, would they be able to make their power felt?  That would have to come first:  the Esprit de Corps of the Poor.

In the end she would go into Parliament.  It would be bound to come soon, the woman’s vote.  And after that the opening of all doors would follow.  She would wear her college robes.  It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them.  What pity it was that the art of dressing—­its relation to life—­was not better understood.  What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable for these hateful slop-shop clothes that made them look like walking scarecrows.  Why had the coming of Democracy coincided seemingly with the spread of ugliness:  dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney-pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for women that spoilt every line of their figure:  dinginess, drabness, monotony everywhere.  It was ugliness that was strangling the soul of the people; stealing from them all dignity, all self-respect, all honour for one another; robbing them of hope, of reverence, of joy in life.