de me hate saints.
But you love them and thought you had one, instead of which you got a
devil. Your luck is far better than mine. If you take my advice, you
will hang on to him like grim death. It is not too late. To-morrow he
will be here, thundering at the gates."

Dimly at the moment the girl's creed turned a ray on her. She lifted her
head.

"He will not thunder at the gates and he is not what you say. But
perhaps I am. I may have done worse than he has and what he has done is
my punishment."

It was very little but it was too much. Mrs. Austen, in spite of her
facile digestion, gagged at it.

"If that is theosophy, I will believe it when I am old, fat and a Hun."

Margaret sank back. "But I am sorry you have been annoyed. It won't
happen again. I will write to him."

Later, she did write.

Forgive me, dear Keith, if I cause you pain, but I feel that I am
not suited to you. Forgive me therefore for not recognising it
sooner. I have thought it all over and, though it wrings my heart
to say it, I cannot see you again. Forgive me and forget.

MARGARET.

XII

Hell was supposed to be very hot, very red, full of pugnacious demons.
Educated people do not believe in it any more. It is curious how
ignorant educated people have become. Hell is an actual plane, less
vivid than was formerly imagined, not hot but cold, grey rather than
red, but amply provided with demons, with the devils of self-accusation,
with the fiends of insoluble queries. Very real and very actual, it is
surprising how many educated people are there. The oddity of that is
increased by the fact that they regard it as a private establishment.
They regard their hell as unique. Perhaps the idea flatters them. Yet
sooner or later everybody enters it. Hell may seem private. It is
universal.

Headlong into it, Margaret's letter precipitated Lennox. Being a man, he
struggled up. But not out. In hell there are no signposts. It takes time
to find one's way. It takes more, it takes resignation. When both have
been acquired, the walls part of themselves. The aspect of life has
altered, but you are free.

Lennox, in struggling up, encountered the demons of enigmatic riddles.
Each word of Margaret's letter they converted into a Why? They thrust it
at him, demanding an answer. But the answer her heart alone possessed.
That heart had been his. It was his no longer. The heart that she had
given him, she had taken away. Not