and contend with something, and
Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this something to be that
queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim bogey stalking pale about
the houses of those who, through the accidents of leisure or of culture,
had once left the door open to the suspicion: Is it possible that there
is a class of people besides my own, or am I dreaming? Happy the
millions, poor or rich, not yet condemned to watch the wistful visiting
or hear the husky mutter of that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by
a less disquieting god. Such were Cecilia's inner feelings.

Even now she did not quite plumb the depths of Stephen's; she felt his
struggle with the ghost; she felt and admired his victory. What she did
not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of the outrage
inflicted on him by Thyme's action. With her--being a woman--the matter
was more practical; she did not grasp, had never grasped, the
architectural nature of Stephen's mind--how really hurt he was by what
did not seem to him in due and proper order.

He spoke: "Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn't she have gone to
work in the ordinary way? She could have put herself in connection with
some proper charitable society--I should never have objected to that.
It's all that young Sanitary idiot!"

"I believe," Cecilia faltered, "that Martin's is a society. It's a kind
of medical Socialism, or something of that sort. He has tremendous faith
in it."

Stephen's lip curled.

"He may have as much faith as he likes," he said, with the restraint that
was one of his best qualities, "so long as he doesn't infect my daughter
with it."

Cecilia said suddenly: "Oh! what are we to do, Stephen? Shall I go over
there to-night?"

As one may see a shadow pass down on a cornfield, so came the cloud on
Stephen's face. It was as though he had not realised till then the full
extent of what this meant. For a minute he was silent. "Better wait for
her letter," he said at last. "He's her cousin, after all, and Mrs.
Grundy's dead--in the Euston Road, at all events."

So, trying to spare each other all they could of anxiety, and careful to
abstain from any hint of trouble before the servants, they dined and went
to bed.

At that hour between the night and morning, when man's vitality is
lowest, and the tremors of his spirit, like birds of ill omen, fly round
and round him, beating their long plumes against his cheeks, Stephen
woke.