ave her his usual careful attention. Marise thought to herself,
"Neale is the only person I ever knew who could listen to other people's
ideas." But when she finished he made no comment. She asked him, "Did
you ever think that old carven-image had that in her? How profound a
disdain for us busy-about-nothing white people she must have!"

Neale nodded. "Most likely. Everybody has a good deal of disdain for
other people's ideals."

"Well, you haven't for hers, have you?" challenged Marise. Neale looked
thoughtful. "I'm no mystic. Their way of managing life often looks to me
like sort of lying down on the job. I'm no mystic and I'm no fish. Looks
to me as though the thing to do isn't to go off in a far corner to get
your momentary glimpse of daylight, but to batter a hole in the roof of
your cave and let daylight in where you live all the time. I can't help
being suspicious of a daylight that's so uncertain you have to go away
from life and hold your breath before you can see it for a minute. I
want it where I do my work."

Marise looked at him, thinking deeply. That was just what Neale did. But
when she looked back at the old Indian woman, just now turning into the
wood-road, she sighed wistfully, and did not know why.

There was so very much growing always to be done in life.

IX

March 10.

(_A letter from Eugenia_:)

". . . I'm planning perhaps to make the trip to the temples in the Malay
jungle. Biskra was deadly, and Italy worse . . . vulgarity and commonness
everywhere. What an absolutely dreary outlook wherever one turns one's
eyes! There is no corner of the modern world that is not vulgar and
common. Democracy has done its horrible leveling down with a vengeance
. . ."

* * * * *

(_A letter from Mr. Welles_:)

". . . The life here is full of interest and change, and it's like dew on
my dusty old heart to see the vitality of the joy-in-life of these
half-disinherited people. I'm ashamed to tell you how they seem to love
me and how good they are to me. Their warmness of heart and their zest
in life. . . . I'm just swept back into youth again. It makes me very much
mortified when I think what a corking good time I am having and what
sanctimonious martyr's airs I put on about coming down here. Of course a
certain amount of my feeling younger and brisker comes from the fact
that, working as I am, nobody feels about me the laid-on-the-shelf
compassion which everybody (and