an. I supposed I should hang my life on
to that once, and was driven up and down and about as if something was
worrying through me. But everything is peaceful now; I seem cured. That
Herr Forstmeister, whom Frieda keeps writing about, must be a noble
character, but he doesn't see that I shall never marry him or anyone. It
isn't shame or mistrust of myself. I simply couldn't. I'm ended. I used
to be so dreamy about a man's love as a girl, and think that for good
or evil love must be the great thing. But it hasn't been; it has been
itself a dream. Do you agree?"

"I do not agree. I do not."

"I ought to remember Leonard as my lover," said Helen, stepping down
into the field. "I tempted him, and killed him, and it is surely the
least I can do. I would like to throw out all my heart to Leonard on
such an afternoon as this. But I cannot. It is no good pretending. I
am forgetting him." Her eyes filled with tears. "How nothing seems to
match--how, my darling, my precious--" She broke off. "Tommy!"

"Yes, please?"

"Baby's not to try and stand.--There's something wanting in me. I see
you loving Henry, and understanding him better daily, and I know
that death wouldn't part you in the least. But I--Is it some awful,
appalling, criminal defect?"

Margaret silenced her. She said: "It is only that people are far more
different than is pretended. All over the world men and women are
worrying because they cannot develop as they are supposed to develop.
Here and there they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don't
fret yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I do not
love children. I am thankful to have none. I can play with their beauty
and charm, but that is all--nothing real, not one scrap of what there
ought to be. And others--others go farther still, and move outside
humanity altogether. A place, as well as a person, may catch the glow.
Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of
the battle against sameness. Differences, eternal differences, planted
by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow
perhaps, but colour in the daily grey. Then I can't have you worrying
about Leonard. Don't drag in the personal when it will not come. Forget
him."

"Yes, yes, but what has Leonard got out of life?"

"Perhaps an adventure."

"Is that enough?"

"Not for us. But for him."

Helen took up a bunch of grass. She looked at the sorrel, and the red
and white and