its own code of morality, and
their mutual love a mere device of Nature to keep things going? Strip
human intercourse of the proprieties, and is it reduced to this? Her
judgment told her no. She knew that out of Nature's device we have built
a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call
of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call; far wider
is the gulf between us and the farmyard than between the farmyard and
the garbage that nourishes it. We are evolving, in ways that Science
cannot measure, to ends that Theology dares not contemplate. "Men
did produce one jewel," the gods will say, and, saying, will give us
immortality. Margaret knew all this, but for the moment she could not
feel it, and transformed the marriage of Evie and Mr. Cahill into a
carnival of fools, and her own marriage--too miserable to think of that,
she tore up the letter, and then wrote another:

"DEAR MR. BAST,

"I have spoken to Mr. Wilcox about you, as I promised, and am sorry to
say that he has no vacancy for you.

"Yours truly,

"M. J. SCHLEGEL."

She enclosed this in a note to Helen, over which she took less trouble
than she might have done; but her head was aching, and she could not
stop to pick her words:

"DEAR HELEN,

"Give him this. The Basts are no good. Henry found the woman drunk on
the lawn. I am having a room got ready for you here, and will you please
come round at once on getting this? The Basts are not at all the type we
should trouble about. I may go round to them myself in the morning, and
do anything that is fair.

"M."

In writing this, Margaret felt that she was being practical. Something
might be arranged for the Basts later on, but they must be silenced
for the moment. She hoped to avoid a conversation between the woman
and Helen. She rang the bell for a servant, but no one answered it;
Mr. Wilcox and the Warringtons were gone to bed, and the kitchen was
abandoned to Saturnalia. Consequently she went over to the George
herself. She did not enter the hotel, for discussion would have been
perilous, and, saying that the letter was important, she gave it to the
waitress. As she recrossed the square she saw Helen and Mr. Bast looking
out of the window of the coffee-room, and feared she was already too
late. Her task was not yet over; she ought to tell Henry what she had
done.

This came easily, for she saw him in the hall. The night wind had been
rattling the pictur