om? The simple, all-important issue of how far men and women
should try to rule the lives of others instead of trying only to rule
their own, and how far those others should allow their lives to be so
ruled? This it was which gave that episode its power of attracting and
affecting the thoughts, feelings, actions of so many people otherwise
remote. And though Felix was paternal enough to say to himself nearly
all the time, 'I can't let Nedda get further into this mess!' he was
philosopher enough to tell himself, in the unfatherly balance of his
hours, that the mess was caused by the fight best of all worth
fighting--of democracy against autocracy, of a man's right to do as he
likes with his life if he harms not others; of 'the Land' against the
fetterers of 'the Land.' And he was artist enough to see how from that
little starting episode the whole business had sprung--given, of course,
the entrance of the wilful force called love. But a father, especially
when he has been thoroughly alarmed, gives the artist and philosopher in
him short shrift.

Nedda came home soon after Sheila went, and to the eyes of Felix she came
back too old and thoughtful altogether. How different a girl from the
Nedda who had so wanted 'to know everything' that first night of May!
What was she brooding over, what planning, in that dark, round, pretty
head? At what resolve were those clear eyes so swiftly raised to look?
What was going on within, when her breast heaved so, without seeming
cause, and the color rushed up in her cheeks at a word, as though she had
been so far away that the effort of recall was alone enough to set all
her veins throbbing. And yet Felix could devise no means of attack on her
infatuation. For a man cannot cultivate the habit of never interfering
and then suddenly throw it over; least of all when the person to be
interfered with is his pet and only daughter.

Flora, not of course in the swim of those happenings at Joyflelds, could
not be got to take the matter very seriously. In fact--beyond what
concerned Felix himself and poetry--the matter that she did take
seriously had yet to be discovered. Hers was one of those semi-detached
natures particularly found in Hampstead. When exhorted to help tackle
the question, she could only suggest that Felix should take them all
abroad when he had finished 'The Last of the Laborers.' A tour, for
instance, in Norway and Sweden, where none of them had ever been, and
perhap