Page 69 (1/2)

This difficulty was rehly unexpected by Freddy's

mother Clara, in the course of her incursions into those artistic

circles which were the highest within her reach, discovered that her

conversational qualifications were expected to include a grounding in

the novels of Mr HG Wells She borrowed theetically that she sed them all within two months The

result was a conversion of a kind quite common today A modern Acts of

the Apostles would fill fifty whole Bibles if anyone were capable of

writing it

Poor Clara, who appeared to Higgins and his reeable

and ridiculous person, and to her own mother as in some inexplicable

way a social failure, had never seen herself in either light; for,

though to soton like

everybody else there, she was accepted as a rational and nor At worst they called her

The Pusher; but to them no more than to herself had it ever occurred

that she was pushing the air, and pushing it in a wrong direction

Still, she was not happy She was growing desperate Her one asset, the

fact that her e

lady had no exchange value, apparently It had prevented her fro educated, because the only education she could have afforded

was education with the Earlscourt green grocer's daughter It had led

her to seek the society of her mother's class; and that class simply

would not have her, because she wasable to afford a maid, could not afford even a

house at hoeneral servant Under such circuenuine product of Largelady Park And yet its tradition

e with anyone within her reach as an

unbearable humiliation Commercial people and professional people in a

small ere odious to her She ran after painters and novelists; but

she did not charm them; and her bold attempts to pick up and practise

artistic and literary talk irritated thenorant, incompetent, pretentious, unwelcoh she did not admit these

disqualifications (for nobody ever faces unpleasant truths of this kind

until the possibility of a way out dawns on them) she felt their

effects too keenly to be satisfied with her position