a woman is growing old. Don't you think, Joan, that in
that case, all three come invariably to the same thing?'

'Love, religion and doctors! As emotional interests, do they come to
the same thing for elderly women?' repeated Mrs Gildea, as if she were
propounding a syllogism. 'No, certainly not, when the elderly woman
happens to be a hard-working journalist.'

'Oh, there you have the pull--I suggested the idea to Rosamond the
other day and she gave a true Rosamondian answer. "They don't come at
all to the same thing," she said, "because usually you have to pay your
doctor and SOMETIMES your lover pays you." Rather smart, wasn't it?'

'Yes, but I think you'd better warn Lady Tallant that the
Leichardt'stonian ladies are a bit Puritanical in their ideas of
repartee.'

'Oh, Rosamond is clever enough to have found that out already for
herself;' and the two glanced at Lady Tallant, who seemed to be playing
up quite satisfactorily to the female representatives of the
Ministerial circle.

'I suppose you made friends with some Socialists when you were in
London?' went on Mrs Gildea.

'My dear, I would have made friends with Beelzebub just them, if he
would have helped me to escape from myself.'

Bridget sighed and paused.

'But you ARE getting over it, Biddy--the disappointment about Mr Maule?
You ARE growing not to care?'

'I don't want to grow not to care--though, of course, now I should
prefer to care about someone or something that isn't Willoughby Maule,
I feel inside me that my salvation lies in caring--in caring
intensely.... But you wouldn't understand, Joan. You weren't built that
way.'

'No,' assented Mrs Gildea doubtfully.

'But,' went on Biddy brightly, 'I think sometimes that if one could get
to the pitch of feeling nothing matters, it would be a way of reaching
the "letting go" stage which one MUST arrive at before one can even
BEGIN to live in the Eternal.'

There seemed something a little comic in the notion of Bridget O'Hara
living in the Eternal, and yet Mrs Gildea realised that there really
was a certain stable quality underneath the flashing, ever changing
temperamental sheath, which might perhaps form a base for the Verities
to rest upon.

'Beelzebub didn't teach you that,' she said.

'No, quite the contrary. It all came out of my concentration studies
and the Higher Thought Centre where I met some most original
dears--Christian Scientists and Spiritualists--and then these
Socialists--n