ng widows we have among us in these days! Only they are
widowed for a noble cause, not by a horrid accident on the stairs. Poor
Oliver, of course, had exemption from military service; he never even had
to go before the tribunal for it, but had it direct from the War Office,
like nearly all Percy's staff, who were recognised by the Government as
doing more important work at home than they could have done at the front.
I have a horror of the men who _evaded_ service during the war, but men
like Oliver Hobart, who would have preferred to be fighting but stayed to
do invaluable work for their country, one must respect. And it seemed
very bitter that Oliver, who hadn't fallen in the war, should have fallen
now down his own stairs. Poor, poor Oliver! As I lay in bed, unable to
sleep, I saw his beautiful face before me. He was quite the most
beautiful man I have ever known. I have given his personal appearance to
the hero of one of my novels, _Sidney, a Man_. It was terrible to me to
think of that beauty lost from the world. Whatever view one may take of
another world (and personally, far as I am from any orthodox view on the
subject, my spiritual investigations have convinced me that there is,
there must be, a life to come; I have had the most wonderful experiences,
that may not be denied) physical beauty, one must believe, is a
phenomenon of this physical universe, and must perish with the body.
Unless, as some thinkers have conceived, the immortal soul wraps itself
about in some aural vapour that takes the form it wore on earth. This is
a possibility, and I would gladly believe it. I must, I decided, try to
bring my poor Jane into touch with psychic interests; it would comfort
her to have the wonderful chance of getting into communication with
Oliver. At present she scouts the whole thing, like all other forms of
supernatural belief. Jane has always been a materialist. It is very
strange to me that my children have developed, intellectually and
spiritually, along such different lines from myself. I have never been
orthodox; I am not even now an orthodox theosophist; I am not of the
stuff which can fall into line and accept things from others; it seems as
if I must always think for myself, delve painfully, with blood and tears,
for Truth. But I have always been profoundly religious; the spiritual
side of life has always meant a very great deal to me; I think I feel
almost too intensely the vibration of Spirit in the world of