perambulator edition is
squeaking; a third edition is expected shortly. Nature is turning out
Wilcoxes in this peaceful abode, so that they may inherit the earth.

CHAPTER XXII

Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature
as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the
rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion.
Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts,
unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is
born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober
against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of
these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his
friends shall find easy-going.

It was hard-going in the roads of Mr. Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he
had neglected them. "I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside."
Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all
had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an
incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had
always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is
desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The
words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men
were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catherine and St.
Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could not be as the
saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a
little ashamed of loving a wife. Amabat, amare timebat. And it was here
that Margaret hoped to help him.

It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her
own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own
soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole
of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be
exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no
longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation
that is life to either, will die.

Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the form of a
good "talking." By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span
their lives with beauty.

But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was
never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness.
He simply did not notice things