temperament of the Lurky gasworkers.

On the third occasion that I saw Isabel she was, as I have said,
climbing a tree--and a very creditable tree--for her own private
satisfaction. It was a lapse from the high seriousness of politics,
and I perceived she felt that I might regard it as such and attach
too much importance to it. I had some difficulty in reassuring her.
And it's odd to note now--it has never occurred to me before--that
from that day to this I do not think I have ever reminded Isabel of
that encounter.

And after that memory she seems to be flickering about always in the
election, an inextinguishable flame; now she flew by on her bicycle,
now she dashed into committee rooms, now she appeared on doorsteps
in animated conversation with dubious voters; I took every chance I
could to talk to her--I had never met anything like her before in
the world, and she interested me immensely--and before the polling
day she and I had become, in the frankest simplicity, fast
friends. . . .

That, I think, sets out very fairly the facts of our early
relationship. But it is hard to get it true, either in form or
texture, because of the bright, translucent, coloured, and
refracting memories that come between. One forgets not only the
tint and quality of thoughts and impressions through that
intervening haze, one forgets them altogether. I don't remember now
that I ever thought in those days of passionate love or the
possibility of such love between us. I may have done so again and
again. But I doubt it very strongly. I don't think I ever thought
of such aspects. I had no more sense of any danger between us,