ss, lacked in something that
roused imagination, that stirred her senses here--the vital being in
her.

It was power, force, experience, adventure. They were all here. She
knew the signs: the varied interests, the primary emotions, music, art,
hunting, prospecting, fighting, gambling. They were mixed with the
solid achievement of talent and force in the business of life. Here was
a model of a new mining-drill, with a picture of the stamps working in
the Work-and-Wonder mine, together with a model of the Kaffir compound
at Kimberley, with the busy, teeming life behind the wire boundaries.

Thus near was Byng to the ways of a child, she thought, thus near to
the everlasting intelligence and the busy soul of a constructive and
creative Deity--if there was a Deity. Despite the frequent laughter on
her tongue and in her eyes, she doubted bitterly at times that there
was a Deity. For how should happen the awful tragedies which
encompassed men and peoples, if there was a Deity. No benign Deity
could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses,
like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities
swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal
wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its
thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague
which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or devastated
by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful breast to
feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the
breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to
their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse
in the end--ah, if one did not smile, one would die of weeping, she
thought.

Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of
sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an
open hand for the poor and miserable,--now that she could afford
it--and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her
humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man. It was
sometimes too pronounced, however, Adrian Fellowes had said; and Adrian
was an acute observer, who took great pride in her. Was it not to
Adrian she had looked first for approval the night of her triumph at
Covent Garden--why, that was only a few days ago, and it seemed a
hundred days, so much had happened since. It was Adrian's handsome face
which had tol