?"

Stung by his tone, Barbara answered in rather a hard voice:

"What we must bear, we must, I suppose. But why should we make trouble?
That's what I can't stand!"

"O profound wisdom!"

Barbara flushed.

"I love Life!" she said.

The galleons of the westering sun were already sailing in a broad
gold fleet straight for that foreshore where the little black stooping
figures had not yet finished their toil, the larks still sang over the
unripe corn--when Harbinger, galloping along the sands from Whitewater
to Sea House, came on that silent couple walking home to dinner.

It would not be safe to say of this young man that he readily diagnosed
a spiritual atmosphere, but this was the less his demerit, since
everything from his cradle up had conspired to keep the spiritual
thermometer of his surroundings at 60 in the shade. And the fact that
his own spiritual thermometer had now run up so that it threatened
to burst the bulb, rendered him less likely than ever to see what was
happening with other people's. Yet, he did notice that Barbara was
looking pale, and--it seemed--sweeter than ever.... With her eldest
brother he always somehow felt ill at ease. He could not exactly afford
to despise an uncompromising spirit in one of his own order, but he
was no more impervious than others to Miltoun's caustic, thinly-veiled
contempt for the commonplace; and having a full-blooded belief in
himself---usual with men of fine physique, whose lots are so cast that
this belief can never or almost never be really shaken--he greatly
disliked the feeling of being a little looked down on. It was an intense
relief, when, saying that he wanted a certain magazine, Miltoun strode
off into the town.

To Harbinger, no less than to Miltoun and Barbara, last night had been
bitter and restless. The sight of that pale swaying figure, with the
parted lips, whirling round in Courtier's arms, had clung to his vision
ever since, the Ball. During his own last dance with her he had been
almost savagely silent; only by a great effort restraining his tongue
from mordant allusions to that 'prancing, red-haired fellow,' as he
secretly called the champion of lost causes. In fact, his sensations
there and since had been a revelation, or would have teen if he could
have stood apart to see them. True, he had gone about next day with his
usual cool, off-hand manner, because one naturally did not let people
see, but it was with such an inner aching and rage o