ing of the dear little lame boy with the language of suffering
in his eyes and the deep music of sorrow in his voice.'

'Your heart sank, Winnie, and why?'

'I felt as if a breath of icy air had blown between us, dividing us
for ever. And then my aunt began to talk about you and your future.'

After some trouble I persuaded Winnie to tell me what was the homily
that this aunt of hers preached _a propos_ of Frank's death. And as
she talked I could not help observing what, as a child, I had only
observed in a dim, semi-conscious way--a strange kind of double
personality in Winnie. At one moment she seemed to me nothing but the
dancing fairy of the sands, objective and unconscious as a young
animal playing to itself, at another she seemed the mouthpiece of the
narrow world-wisdom of this Welsh aunt. No sooner had she spoken of
herself as a friendless, homeless girl, than her brow began to shine
with the pride of the Cymry.

'My aunt,' said she, 'used to tell me that until disaster came upon
my uncle, and they were reduced to living upon a very narrow income,
he and she never really knew what love was--they never really knew
how rich their hearts were in the capacity of loving.'

'Ah, I thought so,' I said bitterly. 'I thought the text was,

Love in a hut, with water and a crust.'

'No,' said Winifred firmly, 'that was not the text. She believed that
the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is
nestling.'

'Then what did she believe? In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what
did she believe?'

'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes
brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's
evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and
luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the
word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is
the most perfect.'

'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love.
And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?'

'She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches
in our time.'

'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'

'She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time.
She told me that the passion of vanity--"the greatest of all the
human passions," as she used to say--has taken the form of
money-worship in our t