anging world of social speculation and endeavour, she prayed always
for the open mind, the listening heart.

"There is one conclusion, one cry, I always come back to at last," she
remembered hearing Hallin say to a young Conservative with whom he had
been having a long economic and social argument. "_Never resign
yourself_!--that seems to be the main note of it. Say, if you
will--believe, if you will, that human nature, being what it is, and
what, so far as we can see, it always must be, the motives which work
the present social and industrial system can never be largely
superseded; that property and saving--luck, too!--struggle, success, and
failure, must go on. That is one's intellectual conclusion; and one has
a right to it--you and I are at one in it. But then--on the heels of it
comes the moral imperative! 'Hold what you please about systems and
movements, and fight for what you hold; only, as an individual--_never
say--never think!_--that it is in the order of things, in the purpose of
God, that one of these little ones--this Board-School child, this man
honestly out of work, this woman "sweated" out of her life--should
perish!' A contradiction, or a commonplace, you say? Well and good. The
only truths that burn themselves into the conscience, that work
themselves out through the slow and manifold processes of the personal
will into a pattern of social improvement, are the contradictions and
the commonplaces!"

So here, in the dark, alone with the haunting, uplifting presences of
"admiration, hope, and love," Marcella vowed, within the limits of her
personal scope and power, never to give up the struggle for a nobler
human fellowship, the lifelong toil to understand, the passionate effort
to bring honour and independence and joy to those who had them not. But
not alone; only, not alone! She had learnt something of the dark
aspects, the crushing complexity of the world. She turned from them
to-night, at last, with a natural human terror, to hide herself in her
own passion, to make of love her guide and shelter. Her whole rich being
was wrought to an intoxication of self-giving. Oh! let the night go
faster! faster! and bring his step upon the road, her cry of repentance
to his ear.

* * * * *

"I trust I am not late. Your clocks, I think, are ahead of ours. You
said eleven?"

Aldous advanced into the room with hand outstretched. He had been
ushered into the drawing-room, somewhat