Jane, who was clear-headed, did it well. She got to know a few men and
women who, she considered, were worth knowing, though, in technical
departments such as the Admiralty, the men were apt to be superior to the
women; the women Jane met there were mostly non-University lower-grade
clerks, and so forth, nice, cheery young things, but rather stupid, who
thought it jolly for Jane to be connected with Leila Yorke and the Potter
press, and were scarcely worth undeceiving. And naval officers, though
charming, were apt to be a little elementary, Jane discovered, in their
general outlook.

However, the job was all right; not a bad plum to have picked out of the
hash, on the whole. And the life was all right. The rooms were jolly
(only the new geyser exploded too often), and Katherine Varick, though
she made stinks in the evenings, not bad to live with, and money not too
scarce, as money goes, and theatres and dinners frequent. Doing one's
bit, putting one's shoulder to the wheel, proving the mettle of the women
of England, certainly had its agreeable side.


6

In intervals of office work and social life, Jane was writing odds and
ends, and planning the books she meant to write after the war. She
hadn't settled her line yet. Articles on social and industrial questions
for the papers, she hoped, for one thing; she had plenty to say on this
head. Short stories. Poems. Then, perhaps, a novel.... About the nature
of the novel Jane was undecided, except that it would be more unlike the
novels of Leila Yorke than any novels had ever been before. Perhaps a
sarcastic, rather cynical novel about human nature, of which Jane did
not think much. Perhaps a serious novel, dealing with social or