Bridgit met Julia at the train and there was purpose in her eye. Julia laughed, knowing that her time had come, but returned the warm embrace with which she was greeted, and allowed herself to be carried without protest to the house in South Audley Street. Mrs. Herbert was no less handsome and fascinating than of old, but if anything she was still more upright of carriage, determined² of eye, and expressive³ of ardent⁴ purpose. Widowed long before the war, Geoffrey’s death had made no change whatever in her life, although she had sent after him the sincere and hearty⁶ regret she would have felt for the loss of any friend. As she was needed in South Africa she had gone there, made herself useful without any fuss, and returned as soon as she could to her work in England. This work was now clearly defined. Bridgit Herbert, indeed, was not the woman to spend any great amount of time seeking or floundering. No dreamer, her mind, once awakened⁷ to the futilities of the life of pleasure, her energies roused, she had applied⁸ herself immediately to a survey and study of her times, and found the work which coincided with her particular talents. Horrified¹⁰ and disgusted with poverty, she sought and found the obvious remedy in the Socialism of the advanced and more practical of the Fabians, although the “ideology” of the older Socialists¹¹ would have made little appeal to her. Soon convinced, however, that Socialism could make little headway against the individualistic and acquisitive mind of the twentieth century male, her fighting blood had warred with her direct practical mind until she had happened to go to the north with an inspector¹² of factories, and listened to somewhat of Christabel Pankhurst’s propaganda in behalf of Woman’s

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