"And is the whole object of the clan to think?" asked John.

"No, that is the subject. Also you speak as if we all had said, 'Let there be a clan, and it was so,'" said Nadine. "You mustn't think that. There was a clan, and we discovered it, like Newton and the orange."

"Apple, surely," said John.

Nadine looked brilliantly round.

"I knew he would say that," she said. "You see you correct what I say, whereas a clansman would be content to understand what I mean."

"Bishop Algie is clan, by the way," said Hugh. "I went down to bathe before breakfast, and found him kneeling down on the beach saying his prayers. That is tremendously clannish."

"I don't see why," said John.

Esther sighed.

"No, of course you wouldn't see," she said.

"Try him with another," said Nadine.

Esther considered.

"Attend, John," she said. "When the last Stevenson letters came out, Berts bought them and looked at one page. Then he took a taxi to Paddington and took a return ticket to Bristol."

"Swindon," said Berts.

"The station is immaterial, so long as it was far away. I daresay Swindon is quite as far as Bristol."

John smiled.

[Pg 63]

[Pg 63]

"There you are quite wrong," he said. "Swindon comes before Bath, and Bristol after Bath. No doubt it does not matter, though it is as well to be accurate."

Esther looked at him with painful anxiety.

"But don't you see why Berts went to Swindon or Bristol?" she said. "Poor dear, you do see now. That is hopeless. You ought to have felt. To reason out what should have been a flash, is worse than not to have understood at all."

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