nd bring her back. Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just
leaving his house she could settle this deep matter! He did not hurry,
feeling decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out,
leaving a message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her
hospital till past nine.

The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his
refreshed senses soaked up its beauty. 'God has so made this world,' he
thought, 'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's ever
a joy to live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the
night starry. Even we can't spoil it.' In Regent's Park the lilacs and
laburnums were still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at them
in passing, as a lover might at his lady. His conscience pricked him
suddenly. Mrs. Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him
on New Year's Eve, the very night he had learned of his own daughter's
tragedy--had he ever thought of them since? How had that poor girl
fared? He had been too impatient of her impenetrable mood. What did he
know of the hearts of others, when he did not even know his own, could
not rule his feelings of anger and revolt, had not guided his own
daughter into the waters of safety! And Leila! Had he not been too
censorious in thought? How powerful, how strange was this instinct of
sex, which hovered and swooped on lives, seized them, bore them away,
then dropped them exhausted and defenceless! Some munition-wagons,
painted a dull grey, lumbered past, driven by sunburned youths in drab.
Life-force, Death-force--was it all one; the great unknowable momentum
from which there was but the one escape, in the arms of their Heavenly
Father? Blake's little old stanzas came into his mind:

"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"

Learned the heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a field that
afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what little miracles
of careless joy among the meadow flowers! Lambs, and flowers, and
sunlight! Famine, lust, an