e work and all reminded
him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he
knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
before her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed. Everything had
become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
house. Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for
which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of
change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
or treason on his soul. Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
others or they hurt him. And, since explanation was the last thing which
o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
found but scant occasion ever to examine anything. Just as in the old
Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles,
and the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own
making, he was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising
that he was in one of his, most religious moods.

"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"

The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of
the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers. In days of
suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was
a valuable person. Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all
the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
still existed. Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
nearly every one she came