weakening within him! She whispered on: "I don't hate my
devil.

"Why should I?--it's part of me. Every day when the sun sets, I'll think
of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good. I
shan't come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry. And I shan't say
good-bye now. It's unlucky."

She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent
embrace, he kissed her cheeks and hair. Freed of each other at last, he
stood for a moment looking at her by the moonlight.

"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!" he said quietly.
"Remember my letter. And good night, my love!" Then, afraid to stay
another second, he went quickly out of the dark little room....

George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying softly:
"George, George!"

Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
just visible.

"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."

Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had
no music in his soul. He loosed the goat.

IV

1

In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the
Pragmatic theory. George held a suitably scientific view. Just as
he would point out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who
diverged from the normal had to justify their divergence in competition
with their environments, or else go under, so in the ethical world it
was all a question of whether Nollie could make good her vagary. If she
could, and grew in strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all
right, her vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched.
If not, the world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and
her vagary proved wrong. The orthodox and academies--he insisted--were
always forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action
which was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other
actions together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer. "Of
course Nollie was crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she
at once began to think differently about life and morals. The deepest
instinct we all have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and
think that what we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of
self-preservation. We're all fighting animals;