n life. But they were no longer the big
exasperatingly important things that had seemed to hold her life by a
hundred painful hooks before she went into the cathedral. They were
small still under this dome of evening, small even by the measure of the
grey buildings to the right of her and the warm lit river to her left,
by the measure of the clustering dark barges, the teeming trams, the
streaming crowds of people, the note of the human process that sounds so
loud there. She felt small even to herself, for the touch of beauty
saves us from our own personalities, makes Gods of us to our own
littleness. She passed under the railway bridge at Charing Cross,
watched the square cluster of Westminster's pinnacles rise above her
until they were out of sight overhead, ran up the little incline and
round into Parliament Square, and was presently out on the riverside
embankment again with the great chimneys of Chelsea smoking athwart the
evening gold. And thence with a sudden effect of skies shut and curtains
drawn she came by devious ways to the Fulham Road and the crowding
traffic of Putney Bridge and Putney High Street and so home.

Snagsby, assisted by a new under-butler, a lean white-faced young man
with red hair, received her ceremoniously and hovered serviceably about
her. On the hall table lay three or four visiting cards of no
importance, some circulars and two letters. She threw the circulars
into the basket placed for them and opened her first letter. It was from
Georgina; it was on several sheets and it began, "I still cannot believe
that you refuse to give me the opportunity the director-generalship of
your hostels means to me. It is not as if you yourself had either the
time or the abilities necessary for them yourself; you haven't, and
there is something almost dog-in-the-manger-ish to my mind in the way in
which you will not give me my chance, the chance I have always been
longing for----"

At this point Lady Harman put down this letter for subsequent perusal
and took its companion, which was addressed in an unfamiliar hand. It
was from Alice Burnet and it was written in that sprawling hand and
diffused style natural to a not very well educated person with a
complicated story to tell in a state of unusual emotion. But the gist
was in the first few sentences which announced that Alice had been
evicted from the hostel. "I found my things on the pavement," wrote
Alice.

Lady Harman became aware of Snagsby still ho