es of the novel, she is shown to
us as faced with the problem of becoming "a lonely woman," the problem
that meets the unmarried and the childless woman. And the claims and the
meaning of religion are confronting her too. The story traces the
workings of Hildeguard's mind and the events of her life for a year.

Christmas Day in the novel finds Hildeguard a lonely and dissatisfied
woman with no "sure anchor." She has had a happy childhood, with many
relations and friends around her. One by one these are taken from
her--some are dead, others are married--and she sees herself, at the age
of thirty-seven, a forlorn figure with no great interest in the future,
and her thoughts dwelling mostly on the joyous past. Two or three of
Hildeguard's friends are conversing together in her rooms. None of them
has had a happy day. Each in her own way is feeling the depression of
the lonely woman. Frances, a little Quaker lady, enters the room, as
someone remarks on the sadness of Christmas-time.

"'Yes,' at last said the Quaker lady; 'I heard what you said as I
came in, dear. Christmas is a hard time with all its memories. _I
think I have found out what we lonely women want. It is a future_.
Our thoughts are always turning to the past. There is not anything
to link us on to the next generation. You see other women with
their families--it is the future to which they look. However good
the past has been, they expect more to come, for their sons and
their daughters. Their life goes on in other lives.' Hildeguard
clasped her hands round her knees and stared into the fire."

"Their life goes on in other lives"--the thought finds a home in
Hildeguard's mind. When, soon after, the little Quakeress dies,
Hildeguard, looking at the quiet face, says to herself: "_Dear little
woman! So you have got your future._" But in her own case she does not
wait for death to bring it to her; she faces her problems, and, refusing
to be swamped by them, makes the currents carry her bark along to the
free, open sea. She flings herself whole-heartedly into causes whose
hopes rest in the future. She draws around her children, who need her
love and care, and makes them her hostages for the future. In all this
we see Elsie Inglis describing a stage in her own life.

But before the story brings us round again to Christmas, something else
has helped to change the outlook for Hildeguard; she has found herself
in relat