Unless goodness is only a negative quality," Valeria pointed out, "a
mere _absence_, it must imply a soul that lives and struggles, and if it
lives and struggles, it is open to the assaults of the devil."

"Yes, and it is liable to go under too sometimes, one must not forget,"
said Hadria, "although most people profess to believe so firmly in the
triumph of the best--how I can't conceive, since the common life of
every day is an incessant harping on the moral: the smallest, meanest,
poorest, thinnest, vulgarest qualities in man and woman are those
selected for survival, in the struggle for existence."

There was a cry of remonstrance from idealists.

"But what else do we mean when we talk by common consent of the world's
baseness, harshness, vulgarity, injustice? It means surely--and think of
it!--that it is composed of men and women with the best of them killed
out, as a nerve burnt away by acid; a heart won over to meaner things
than it set out beating for; a mind persuaded to nibble at edges of dry
crust that might have grown stout and serviceable on generous diet, and
mellow and inspired with noble vintage."

"You really are shockingly Bacchanalian to-day," cried Lady Engleton.

Hadria laughed. "Metaphorically, I am a toper. The wonderful clear
sparkle, the subtle flavour, the brilliancy of wine, has for me a
strange fascination; it seems to signify so much in life that women
lose."

"True. What beverage should one take as a type of what they gain by the
surrender?" asked Lady Engleton, who was disposed to hang back towards
orthodoxy, in the presence of her uncompromising neighbour.

"Oh, toast and water!" replied Hadria.

Part III.

CHAPTER XXXII.

The speed was glorious. Back flashed field and hill and copse, and the
dear "companionable hedgeways." Back flew iterative telegraph posts with
Herculean swing, into the Past, looped together in rhythmic movement,
marking the pulses of old Time. On, with rack and roar, into the
mysterious Future. One could sit at the window and watch the machinery
of Time's foundry at work; the hammers of his forge beating, beating,
the wild sparks flying, the din and chaos whirling round one's
bewildered brain;--Past becoming Present, Present melting into Future,
before one's eyes. To sit and watch the whirring wheels; to think "Now
it is thus and thus; presently, another slice of earth and sky awaits
me"--ye Gods, it is not to be realized!

The wonder of the