thing, if there's
no purpose in our lives, persuade me of it, for God's sake!"

Carried suddenly beyond her depth, Barbara could only put out her hand,
and say: "Oh! don't take things so hard!"

"Since you say that life is short," Miltoun muttered, with his smile,
"you shouldn't spoil it by feeling pity! In old days we went to the
Tower for our convictions. We can stand a little private roasting, I
hope; or has the sand run out of us altogether?"

Stung by his tone, Barbara answered in rather a hard voice:

"What we must bear, we must, I suppose. But why should we make trouble?
That's what I can't stand!"

"O profound wisdom!"

Barbara flushed.

"I love Life!" she said.

The galleons of the westering sun were already sailing in a broad gold
fleet straight for that foreshore where the little black stooping figures
had not yet finished their toil, the larks still sang over the unripe
corn--when Harbinger, galloping along the sands from Whitewater to Sea
House, came on that silent couple walking home to dinner.

It would not be safe to say of this young man that he readily diagnosed a
spiritual atmosphere, but this was the less his demerit, since everything
from his cradle up had conspired to keep the spiritual thermometer of his
surroundings at 60 in the shade. And the fact that his own spiritual
thermometer had now run up so that it threatened to burst the bulb,
rendered him less likely than ever to see what was happening with other
people's. Yet, he did notice that Barbara was looking pale, and--it
seemed--sweeter than ever.... With her eldest brother he always somehow
felt ill at ease. He could not exactly afford to despise an
uncompromising spirit in one of his own order, but he was no more
impervious than others to Miltoun's caustic, thinly-veiled contempt for
the commonplace; and having a full-blooded belief in himself---usual with
men of fine physique, whose lots are so cast that this belief can never
or almost never be really shaken--he greatly disliked the feeling of
being a little looked down on. It was an intense relief, when, saying
that he wanted a certain magazine, Miltoun strode off into the town.

To Harbinger, no less than to Miltoun and Barbara, last night had been
bitter and restless. The sight of that pale swaying figure, with the
parted lips, whirling round in Courtier's arms, had clung to his vision
ever since, the Ball. During his own last dance with her he had been
almost savag