things. I have watched them ever
since, putting out tendrils and taking hold of the poles and pulling and
climbing like little acrobats. And curling round and unfolding leaves
and more leaves, until at last they threw them out as if they were
beginning to boast that they could climb up into the blue of the sky
if the summer were long enough. And now, look at them!" her hand waved
towards the great gardens. "Forests of them, cool green pathways and
avenues with leaf canopies over them."

"You have seen it all," he said. "You do see things, don't you? A few
hundred yards down the road I passed something you had seen. I knew it
was you who had seen it, though the poor wretches had not heard your
name."

She hesitated a moment, then stooped down and took up in her hand a bit
of pebbled earth from the pathway. There was storm in the blue of
her eyes as she held it out for him to look at as it lay on the bare
rose-flesh of her palm.

"See," she said, "see, it is like that--what we give. It is like that."
And she tossed the earth away.

"It does not seem like that to those others."

"No, thank God, it does not. But to one's self it is the mere luxury of
self-indulgence, and the realisation of it sometimes tempts one to
be even a trifle morbid. Don't you see," a sudden thrill in her voice
startled him, "they are on the roadside everywhere all over the world."

"Yes. All over the world."

"Once when I was a child of ten I read a magazine article about the
suffering millions and the monstrously rich, who were obviously to blame
for every starved sob and cry. It almost drove me out of my childish
senses. I went to my father and threw myself into his arms in a violent
fit of crying. I clung to him and sobbed out, 'Let us give it all away;
let us give it all away and be like other people!'"

"What did he say?"

"He said we could never be quite like other people. We had a certain
load to carry along the highway. It was the thing the whole world wanted
and which we ourselves wanted as much as the rest, and we could not
sanely throw it away. It was my first lesson in political economy and
I abhorred it. I was a passionate child and beat furiously against the
stone walls enclosing present suffering. It was horrible to know that
they could not be torn down. I cried out, 'When I see anyone who is
miserable by the roadside I shall stop and give him everything he
wants--everything!' I was ten years old, and thought it could be d