nge and our thoughts change; slight differences of
temperament grow into barriers between us; unguessed antagonisms widen
into gulfs. Accidents come into our lives. A friend was telling me the
other day of a woman who practically proposed to and married a musical
genius, purely and solely to be of use to him. She earned quite a big
income, drawing fashions; and her idea was to relieve him of the
necessity of doing pot-boilers for a living, so that he might devote his
whole time to his real work. And a few weeks after they were married she
ran the point of a lead pencil through her eye and it set up inflammation
of her brain. And now all the poor fellow has to think of is how to make
enough to pay for her keep at a private lunatic asylum. I don't mean to
be flippant. It's the very absurdity of it all that makes the mystery of
life--that renders it so hopeless for us to attempt to find our way
through it by our own judgment. It is like the ants making all their
clever, laborious plans, knowing nothing of chickens and the gardener's
spade. That is why we have to cling to the life we can order for
ourselves--the life within us. Truth, Justice, Pity. They are the
strong things, the eternal things, the things we've got to sacrifice
ourselves for--serve with our bodies and our souls.

"Don't think me a prig," she pleaded. "I'm talking as if I knew all
about it. I don't really. I grope in the dark; and now and then--at
least so it seems to me--I catch a glint of light. We are powerless in
ourselves. It is only God working through us that enables us to be of
any use. All we can do is to keep ourselves kind and clean and free from
self, waiting for Him to come to us."

The girl rose. "I must be getting back," she said. "Dad will be
wondering where I've got to."

She paused with the door in her hand, and a faint smile played round the
thin red lips.

"Tell me," she said. "What is God?"

"A Labourer, together with man, according to Saint Paul," Joan answered.

The girl turned and went. Joan watched her as she descended the great
staircase. She moved with a curious, gliding motion, pausing at times
for the people to make way for her.

CHAPTER XVI

It was a summer's evening; Joan had dropped in at the Greysons and had
found Mary alone, Francis not having yet returned from a bachelor dinner
at his uncle's, who was some big pot in the Navy. They sat in the
twilight, facing the open French windows