make them worse. Gregory had his own way of seeing things that was very
dear to him--so dear that he would shut his eyes sooner than see them any
other way. And since things to him were not the same as things to Mr.
Paramor, it cannot, after all, be said that he did not see things as they
were. But dirt upon a face that he wished to be clean he could not
see--a fluid in his blue eyes dissolved that dirt while the image of the
face was passing on to their retinae. The process was unconscious, and
has been called idealism. This was why the longer he reflected the more
agonisedly certain he became that his ward was right to be faithful to
the man she loved, right to join her life to his. And he went about
pressing the blade of this thought into his soul.

About four o'clock on the day of Mrs. Pendyce's visit to the studio a
letter was brought him by a page-boy.

"GREEN'S HOTEL,
"Thursday.
"DEAR GRIG,

"I have seen Helen Bellew, and have just come from George. We have all
been living in a bad dream. She does not love him--perhaps has never
loved him. I do not know; I do not wish to judge. She has given him up.
I will not trust myself to say anything about that. From beginning to end
it all seems so unnecessary, such a needless, cross-grained muddle. I
write this line to tell you how things really are, and to beg you, if you
have a moment to spare, to look in at George's club this evening and let
me know if he is there and how he seems. There is no one else that I
could possibly ask to do this for me. Forgive me if this letter pains
you.

"Your affectionate cousin,
"MARGERY PENDYCE."

To those with the single eye, the narrow personal view of all things
human, by whom the irony underlying the affairs of men is unseen and
unenjoyed, whose simple hearts afford that irony its most precious
smiles, who; vanquished by that irony, remain invincible--to these no
blow of Fate, no reversal of their ideas, can long retain importance. The
darts stick, quaver, and fall off, like arrows from chain-armour, and the
last dart, slipping upwards under the harness, quivers into the heart to
the cry of "What--you! No, no; I don't believe you're here!"

Such as these have done much of what has had to be done in this old
world, and perhaps still more of what has had to be undone.

When Gregory