an only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult
relations. If I marry, it will either be a man who's strong enough to
boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for
there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I
shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.'
There! Because I'm uneducated. But you, you're different; you're a
heroine."

"Oh, Helen! Am I? Will it be as dreadful for poor Henry as all that?"

"You mean to keep proportion, and that's heroic, it's Greek, and I don't
see why it shouldn't succeed with you. Go on and fight with him and help
him. Don't ask me for help, or even for sympathy. Henceforward I'm going
my own way. I mean to be thorough, because thoroughness is easy. I
mean to dislike your husband, and to tell him so. I mean to make no
concessions to Tibby. If Tibby wants to live with me, he must lump me.
I mean to love you more than ever. Yes, I do. You and I have built
up something real, because it is purely spiritual. There's no veil of
mystery over us. Unreality and mystery begin as soon as one touches the
body. The popular view is, as usual, exactly the wrong one. Our bothers
are over tangible things--money, husbands, house-hunting. But Heaven
will work of itself."

Margaret was grateful for this expression of affection, and answered,
"Perhaps." All vistas close in the unseen--no one doubts it--but Helen
closed them rather too quickly for her taste. At every turn of speech
one was confronted with reality and the absolute. Perhaps Margaret grew
too old for metaphysics, perhaps Henry was weaning her from them, but
she felt that there was something a little unbalanced in the mind that
so readily shreds the visible. The business man who assumes that this
life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail,
on this side and on that, to hit the truth. "Yes, I see, dear; it's
about half-way between," Aunt Juicy had hazarded in earlier years. No;
truth, being alive, was not half-way between anything. It was only to be
found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion
is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to insure sterility.

Helen, agreeing here, disagreeing there, would have talked till
midnight, but Margaret, with her packing to do, focussed the
conversation on Henry. She might abuse Henry behind his back, but please
would she always be civil to him in comp