great trial to her orderly mind. "She is
an odd woman. She is always laughing. She actually finds it amusing that
we know no more."

"They are an odd family."

"They are indeed."

Herbert, with unusual sweetness, bent down and kissed her.

She thanked him.

Their tenderness soon passed. They exchanged it with averted eyes. It
embarrassed them. There are moments for all of us when we seem obliged
to speak in a new unprofitable tongue. One might fancy a seraph, vexed
with our normal language, who touches the pious to blasphemy,
the blasphemous to piety. The seraph passes, and we proceed
unaltered--conscious, however, that we have not been ourselves, and that
we may fail in this function yet again. So Agnes and Herbert, as they
proceeded to discuss the Jackson's supper-party, had an uneasy memory of
spiritual deserts, spiritual streams.

XXVI

Poor Mr. Ansell was actually sitting in the garden of Dunwood House. It
was Sunday morning. The air was full of roasting beef. The sound of
a manly hymn, taken very fast, floated over the road from the school
chapel. He frowned, for he was reading a book, the Essays of Anthony
Eustace Failing.

He was here on account of this book--at least so he told himself. It had
just been published, and the Jacksons were sure that Mr. Elliot would
have a copy. For a book one may go anywhere. It would not have been
logical to enter Dunwood House for the purpose of seeing Rickie, when
Rickie had not come to supper yesterday to see him. He was at Sawston to
assure himself of his friend's grave. With quiet eyes he had intended
to view the sods, with unfaltering fingers to inscribe the epitaph. Love
remained. But in high matters he was practical. He knew that it would be
useless to reveal it.

"Morning!" said a voice behind him.

He saw no reason to reply to this superfluous statement, and went on
with his reading.

"Morning!" said the voice again.

As for the Essays, the thought was somewhat old-fashioned, and he picked
many holes in it; nor was he anything but bored by the prospect of the
brotherhood of man. However, Mr. Failing stuck to his guns, such as they
were, and fired from them several good remarks. Very notable was his
distinction between coarseness and vulgarity (coarseness, revealing
something; vulgarity, concealing something), and his avowed preference
for coarseness. Vulgarity, to him, had been the primal curse, the shoddy
reticence that prevents man opening his he