She had a certain indefinite beauty of her own that made people—some people: mostly men—wonder where they had seen a flower like her—a lily, they were nearly sure it was—or perhaps it was a white clematis—the one with the star centre that swung so gracefully. They continued looking at her and thinking of flowers, and happy is the girl who makes people think of flowers when they see her!
Having very few delusions she knew that there was something of a flower about her nature. And being well aware that flowers are the most practical things in Nature, she had aspirations as boundless as those of a lily.
That was why she was delighted when she attracted to her various forms of idle insect life, male and female. Her aspirations were to attract rather than to retain, for she had the lily’s instincts as well as the lily’s industry. She knew that when youth made a bee-line to her (speaking in a phrase of the garden) they did so for their own advantage. And she awaited their departure with interest, knowing as she did that it is when the insect leaves the lily that the latter is most benefited; but without prejudice to the possibilities of the insect being also benefited. She had no sympathy with the insectivorous plants of womankind, though at the same time she knew that she was born with a passion for experiments. She hoped, however, that her curiosity was founded on a scientific basis.
She had, as it were, taken Love into her father’s laboratory, and with his assistance subjected it to the most careful analysis. She was able to assign to it a chemical symbol, and so she fancied that she knew all there was to be known about love.
She knew a good deal less about it than does the flower of the lily when the summer is at its height.
And now this offspring of the most modern spirit of investigation and the most ancient femininity that existed before the scorpion found his way into the Silurian rocks to sting, after the lapse of a hundred thousand years, the biologists who had nailed their faith to a theory—this blend of the perfume of the lily and the fumes of hydrochlorate of potassium, was chatting to her friend Josephine West as her motor-victoria threaded its silent way through the traffic of Oxford Street to that region where Mr. Richmond had established his Technical School of Literature.
Josephine West was the daughter of the right honourable Joseph West, Under Secretary of State for the Department of Arbitration.