yellow clover, and the quaker grass, and the daisies, and
the bents that composed it. She raised it to her face.

"Is it sweetening yet?" asked Margaret.

"No, only withered."

"It will sweeten to-morrow."

Helen smiled. "Oh, Meg, you are a person," she said. "Think of the
racket and torture this time last year. But now I couldn't stop unhappy
if I tried. What a change--and all through you!"

"Oh, we merely settled down. You and Henry learnt to understand one
another and to forgive, all through the autumn and the winter."

"Yes, but who settled us down?"

Margaret did not reply. The scything had begun, and she took off her
pince-nez to watch it.

"You!" cried Helen. "You did it all, sweetest, though you're too stupid
to see. Living here was your plan--I wanted you; he wanted you; and
everyone said it was impossible, but you knew. Just think of our lives
without you, Meg--I and baby with Monica, revolting by theory, he handed
about from Dolly to Evie. But you picked up the pieces, and made us a
home. Can't it strike you--even for a moment--that your life has been
heroic? Can't you remember the two months after Charles's arrest, when
you began to act, and did all?"

"You were both ill at the time," said Margaret. "I did the obvious
things. I had two invalids to nurse. Here was a house, ready furnished
and empty. It was obvious. I didn't know myself it would turn into a
permanent home. No doubt I have done a little towards straightening the
tangle, but things that I can't phrase have helped me."

"I hope it will be permanent," said Helen, drifting away to other
thoughts.

"I think so. There are moments when I feel Howards End peculiarly our
own."

"All the same, London's creeping."

She pointed over the meadow--over eight or nine meadows, but at the end
of them was a red rust.

"You see that in Surrey and even Hampshire now," she continued. "I can
see it from the Purbeck Downs. And London is only part of something
else, I'm afraid. Life's going to be melted down, all over the world."

Margaret knew that her sister spoke truly. Howards End, Oniton, the
Purbeck Downs, the Oderberge, were all survivals, and the melting-pot
was being prepared for them. Logically, they had no right to be alive.
One's hope was in the weakness of logic. Were they possibly the earth
beating time?

"Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever,"
she said. "This craze for motion has only set in during the