ame a punishment and
end to the folly of kings!

Only a little while ago Cissie's imagination might have been captured by
so romantic a dream. She was still but a year or so out of the stage of
melodrama. But she was out of it. She was growing up now to a subtler
wisdom. People, she was beginning to realise, do not do these simple
things. They make vows of devotion and they are not real vows of
devotion; they love--quite honestly--and qualify. There are no great
revenges but only little mean ones; no life-long vindications except the
unrelenting vengeance of the law. There is no real concentration of
people's lives anywhere such as romance demands. There is change, there
is forgetfulness. Everywhere there is dispersal. Even to the tragic
story of Teddy would come the modifications of time. Even to the
wickedness of the German princes would presently be added some
conflicting aspects. Could Letty keep things for years in her mind, hard
and terrible, as they were now? Surely they would soften; other things
would overlay them....

There came a rush of memories of Letty in a dozen schoolgirl adventures,
times when she had ventured, and times when she had failed; Letty
frightened, Letty vexed, Letty launching out to great enterprises, going
high and hard and well for a time, and then failing. She had seen Letty
snivelling and dirty; Letty shamed and humiliated. She knew her Letty to
the soul. Poor Letty! Poor dear Letty! With a sudden clearness of vision
Cissie realised what was happening in her sister's mind. All this tense
scheming of revenges was the imaginative play with which Letty warded
off the black alternative to her hope; it was not strength, it was
weakness. It was a form of giving way. She could not face starkly the
simple fact of Teddy's death. That was too much for her. So she was
building up this dream of a mission of judgment against the day when she
could resist the facts no longer. She was already persuaded, only she
would not be persuaded until her dream was ready. If this state of
suspense went on she might establish her dream so firmly that it would
at last take complete possession of her mind. And by that time also she
would have squared her existence at Matching's Easy with the elaboration
of her reverie.

She would go about the place then, fancying herself preparing for this
tremendous task she would never really do; she would study German maps;
she would read the papers about German statesmen and