out that
we revolved about the sun, instead of sitting still and fancying that
all the planets were dancing attendance on us. After all, they were
_not_; and it's rather humiliating to think how the morning stars must
have laughed together about it!"

There was no self-complacency in Justine's eagerness to help. It was far
easier for her to express it in action than in counsel, to grope for the
path with her friend than to point the way to it; and when she had to
speak she took refuge in figures to escape the pedantry of appearing to
advise. But it was not only to Mrs. Dressel that her parables were dark,
and the blank look in Bessy's eyes soon snatched her down from the
height of metaphor.

"I mean," she continued with a smile, "that, as human nature is
constituted, it has got to find its real self--the self to be interested
in--outside of what we conventionally call 'self': the particular
Justine or Bessy who is clamouring for her particular morsel of life.
You see, self isn't a thing one can keep in a box--bits of it keep
escaping, and flying off to lodge in all sorts of unexpected crannies;
we come across scraps of ourselves in the most unlikely places--as I
believe you would in Westmore, if you'd only go back there and look for
them!"

Bessy's lip trembled and the colour sprang to her face; but she answered
with a flash of irritation: "Why doesn't _he_ look for me there,
then--if he still wants to find me?"

"Ah--it's for him to look here--to find himself _here_," Justine
murmured.

"Well, he never comes here! That's his answer."

"He will--he will! Only, when he does, let him find you."

"Find me? I don't understand. How can he, when he never sees me? I'm no
more to him than the carpet on the floor!"

Justine smiled again. "Well--be that then! The thing is to _be_."

"Under his feet? Thank you! Is that what you mean to marry for? It's not
what husbands admire in one, you know!"

"No." Justine stood up with a sense of stealing discouragement. "But I
don't think I want to be admired----"

"Ah, that's because you know you are!" broke from the depths of the
other's bitterness.

The tone smote Justine, and she dropped into the seat at her friend's
side, silently laying a hand on Bessy's feverishly-clasped fingers.

"Oh, don't let us talk about me," complained the latter, from whose lips
the subject was never long absent. "And you mustn't think I _want_ you
to marry, Justine; not for myself, I mean--I'