iasm. They were all so fatuously
contented with their environment. Sheltered from birth, their anxiety
was chiefly how to make life pass the pleasantest. They occasionally
showed a spasmodic excitement over the progress of a cricket or polo
match. Their achievements were largely those of the stay-at-home
warriors who fought with the quill what others faced death with the
sword for. Their inertia disgusted her. Their self-satisfaction spurred
her to resentment.

Here was a man in the real heart of life. He was engaged in a struggle
that makes existence worth while--the effort to bring a message to his
people.

How all the conversations she was forced to listen to in her narrow
world rose up before her in their carping meannesses! Her father's
brutal diatribes against a people, unfortunate enough to be compelled,
from force of circumstance, to live on a portion of land that belonged
to him, yet in whose lives he took no interest whatsoever. His only
anxiety was to be paid his rents. How, and through what misery, his
tenants scraped the money together to do it with, mattered nothing to
him. All that DID matter was that he MUST BE PAID.

Then arose a picture of her sister Monica, with her puny social
pretensions. Recognition of those in a higher grade bread and meat and
drink to her. Adulation and gross flattery the very breath of her
nostrils.

Her brother's cheap, narrow platitudes about the rights of rank and
wealth.

To Angela wealth had no rights except to bring happiness to the world.
It seemed to bring only misery once people acquired it. Grim sorrow
seemed to stalk in the trail of the rich.

She could not recall one moment of real, unfeigned happiness among her
family. The only time she could remember her father smiling or
chuckling was at some one else's misfortune, or over some cruel thing
he had said himself.

Her sister's joy over some little social triumph--usually at the cost
of the humiliation of another.

Her brother's cheeriness over some smart stroke of business in which
another firm was involved to their cost.

Parasites all!

The memory of her mother was the only link that bound her to her
childhood. The gentle, uncomplaining spirit of her: the unselfish
abnegation of her: the soul's tragedy of her--giving up her life at the
altar of duty, at the bidding of a hardened despot.

All Angela's childhood came back in a brief illuminating flash. The
face of her one dear, dead companion--her mot