him fingering my Ruskins and
Stevensons, I seemed to see life straight and real, and it isn't a
pretty sight. My books are back again, thanks to you, but they'll never
be the same to me again, and I shan't ever again think night in the
woods is wonderful."

"Why not?" asked Helen, throwing up the window. "Because I see one must
have money."

"Well, you're wrong."

"I wish I was wrong, but--the clergyman--he has money of his own, or
else he's paid; the poet or the musician--just the same; the tramp--he's
no different. The tramp goes to the workhouse in the end, and is paid
for with other people's money. Miss Schlegel the real thing's money, and
all the rest is a dream."

"You're still wrong. You've forgotten Death."

Leonard could not understand.

"If we lived forever, what you say would be true. But we have to die,
we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real
thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things,
because Death is coming. I love Death--not morbidly, but because He
explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the
eternal foes. Not Death and Life. Never mind what lies behind Death, Mr.
Bast, but be sure that the poet and the musician and the tramp will be
happier in it than the man who has never learnt to say, 'I am I.'"

"I wonder."

"We are all in a mist--I know, but I can help you this far--men like
the Wilcoxes are deeper in the mist than any. Sane, sound Englishmen!
building up empires, levelling all the world into what they call common
sense. But mention Death to them and they're offended, because Death's
really Imperial, and He cries out against them for ever."

"I am as afraid of Death as any one."

"But not of the idea of Death."

"But what is the difference?"

"Infinite difference," said Helen, more gravely than before.

Leonard looked at her wondering, and had the sense of great things
sweeping out of the shrouded night. But he could not receive them,
because his heart was still full of little things. As the lost umbrella
had spoilt the concert at Queen's Hall, so the lost situation was
obscuring the diviner harmonies now. Death, Life, and Materialism were
fine words, but would Mr. Wilcox take him on as a clerk? Talk as one
would, Mr. Wilcox was king of this world, the superman, with his own
morality, whose head remained in the clouds.

"I must be stupid," he said apologetically.

While to Helen the paradox became cl