, he would go to Leila's
and bring her back. Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just leaving
his house she could settle this deep matter! He did not hurry, feeling
decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a
message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her hospital till
past nine.

The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his refreshed
senses soaked up its beauty. 'God has so made this world,' he thought,
'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's ever a joy to
live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the night starry.
Even we can't spoil it.' In Regent's Park the lilacs and laburnums were
still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at them in passing, as
a lover might at his lady. His conscience pricked him suddenly. Mrs.
Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New Year's Eve,
the very night he had learned of his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever
thought of them since? How had that poor girl fared? He had been too
impatient of her impenetrable mood. What did he know of the hearts of
others, when he did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of
anger and revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of
safety! And Leila! Had he not been too censorious in thought? How
powerful, how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped
on lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
defenceless! Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered past,
driven by sunburned youths in drab. Life-force, Death-force--was it all
one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was but the one
escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father? Blake's little old stanzas
came into his mind:

"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"

Learned the heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a field that
afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what little miracles
of careless joy among the meadow flowers! Lambs,