lt strangely stirred. It would indeed be wonderful
to have a rest, a cessation.

Habit, however, steadied her again; and years of intercourse with
the poor made her say, with the slight though sympathetic superiority
of the explainer, "But then, you see, heaven isn't somewhere else. It
is here and now. We are told so."

She became very earnest, just as she did when trying patiently to
help and enlighten the poor. "Heaven is within us," she said in her
gentle low voice. "We are told that on the very highest authority.
And you know the lines about the kindred points, don't you--"

"Oh yes, I know them," interrupted Mrs. Wilkins impatiently.

"The kindred points of heaven and home," continued Mrs.
Arbuthnot, who was used to finishing her sentences. "Heaven is in our
home."

"It isn't," said Mrs. Wilkins, again surprisingly.

Mrs. Arbuthnot was taken aback. Then she said gently, "Oh, but
it is. It is there if we choose, if we make it."

"I do choose, and I do make it, and it isn't," said Mrs. Wilkins.

Then Mrs. Arbuthnot was silent, for she too sometimes had doubts
about homes. She sat and looked uneasily at Mrs. Wilkins, feeling more
and more the urgent need to getting her classified. If she could only
classify Mrs. Wilkins, get her safely under her proper heading, she
felt that she herself would regain her balance, which did seem very
strangely to be slipping all to one side. For neither had she had a
holiday for years, and the advertisement when she saw it had set her
dreaming, and Mrs. Wilkins's excitement about it was infectious, and
she had the sensation, as she listened to her impetuous, odd talk and
watched her lit-up face, that she was being stirred out of sleep.

Clearly Mrs. Wilkins was unbalanced, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had met
the unbalanced before--indeed she was always meeting them--and they had
no effect on her own stability at all; whereas this one was making her
feel quite wobbly, quite as though to be off and away, away from her
compass points of God, Husband, Home and Duty--she didn't feel as if
Mrs. Wilkins intended Mr. Wilkins to come too--and just for once be
happy, would be both good and desirable. Which of course it wasn't;
which certainly of course it wasn't. She, also, had a nest-egg,
invested gradually in the Post Office Savings Bank, but to suppose that
she would ever forget her duty to the extent of drawing it out and
spending it on herself was surely absurd. Surely she cou