eartless 'some day' which can never help you or me,
or any of us who live now. It is we, I suppose, who are required to help
the 'some day.' Only how, when we are ourselves _in extremis_?"

"The poor are helpers of the poor," said Valeria.

"But if they grow too poor, to starvation point, then they can help no
more; they can only perish slowly."

"I hoped," said Valeria, "that Professor Fortescue would have poured oil
upon the troubled waters."

"He does in one sense. But in another, he makes me feel more than ever
what I am missing."

Miss Du Prel's impulsive instincts could be kept at bay no longer.

"There is really nothing for it, but some deed of daring," she cried. "I
believe, if only your husband could get over his horror of the scandal
and talk, that a separation would be best for you both. It is not as if
he cared for you. One can see he does not. You are such a strange,
inconsequent being, Hadria, that I believe you would feel the parting
far more than he would (conventions apart)."

"No question of it," said Hadria. "Our disharmony, radical and hopeless
as it is, does not prevent my having a strong regard for Hubert. I can't
help seeing the admirable sides of his character. He is too irritated
and aggrieved to feel anything but rancour against me. It is natural. I
understand."

"Ah, it will only end in some disaster, if you try to reconcile the
irreconcilable. Of course I think it is a great pity that you have not
more of the instincts on which homes are founded, but since you have
not----"

Hadria turned sharply round. "Do you really regret that just for once
the old, old game has been played unsuccessfully? Therein I can't agree
with you, though I am the loser by it." Hadria grasped a swaying spray
that the wind blew towards her, and clasped it hard in her hand,
regardless of the thorns. "It gives me a keen, fierce pleasure to know
that for all their training and constraining and incitement and
starvation, I have _not_ developed masses of treacly instinct in which
mind and will and every human faculty struggle, in vain, to move leg or
wing, like some poor fly doomed to a sweet and sticky death. At least
the powers of the world shall not prevail with me by _that_ old device.
Mind and will and every human faculty may die, but they shall not drown,
in the usual applauded fashion, in seas of tepid, bubbling, up-swelling
instinct. I will dare anything rather than endure that. They must take
the troubl