_black_, when a certain person comes near? Did you? No, I know you never did, you're far too good a Christian. But I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in any religion of love. There's little enough love here, and what there is goes to the wall. And there's no love over us; just a cruel, cruel, grinding power, which delights in breaking to bits whatever it sees that's beautiful and happy. Oh, it's an ugly, cruel, hateful world!"

"I think it's a very nice world," said Lettice, her words falling like drops of soft water on white-hot steel. They did not very accurately reflect her thoughts, but Lettice's words seldom did that. Dorothea laughed them to scorn.

"You wouldn't if you were in my shoes," she said derisively. She sat up. "Listen, and I'll tell you if you like. You've just heard what sort of life I had when I was a girl; I can laugh over it now, but it wasn't very gay at the time. Well, I got away, as I said; and for a little I was happy—oh, I _was_—for just a little, little while. And then, in a moment—everything gone. Everything. All I'd cared for, and the hopes I had—oh, I had, I had such heavenly hopes—all gone, all broken, dead, dead, dead." She beat her palm on the ground. "I dare say if I'd been older I might have taken it better," she said, turning her eyes on Lettice with an appeal which nothing in earth or heaven could satisfy; for it was an appeal to the Moving Finger to go back, to reverse what had been written. "I might have been gentle and forgiving and resigned then. But I wasn't old enough. I'm only twenty-one now. And I'm tired—I'm tired."

The mournful vibrations of her voice died away.

"It is very tiring to hate anybody," said Lettice, deftly plucking the core of meaning out of these wild speeches. Dorothea did not seem to hear. Her eyes, transparent windows of her soul, were miserably sad. Presently with a quick sigh she roused herself, turned the key on memory and drew down the blind."There, that's enough about me. I didn't mean to tell you all this, but never mind, I'm glad you know. Now let's talk about something cheerful. Tell me about that handsome cousin of yours. What's he like?"

Lettice, who could not bear to see a book mishandled, had picked up Dorothea's, and was smoothing its rumpled pages. She accommodated herself with patience to this violent change of subject. "Denis?" she said. "He is very nice." Convenient word! In Lettice's vocabulary it covered a multitude of meanings.

"I like his face. He looks as if he were in the army. Is he in 

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