ple who say that the state of that society was not the cause
of all that ugliness; that they were ugly in their life because they
liked to be, and could have had beautiful things about them if they had
chosen; just as a man or body of men now may, if they please, make things
more or less beautiful--Stop! I know what you are going to say."

"Do you?" said I, smiling, yet with a beating heart.

"Yes," she said; "you are answering me, teaching me, in some way or
another, although you have not spoken the words aloud. You were going to
say that in times of inequality it was an essential condition of the life
of these rich men that they should not themselves make what they wanted
for the adornment of their lives, but should force those to make them
whom they forced to live pinched and sordid lives; and that as a
necessary consequence the sordidness and pinching, the ugly barrenness of
those ruined lives, were worked up into the adornment of the lives of the
rich, and art died out amongst men? Was that what you would say, my
friend?"

"Yes, yes," I said, looking at her eagerly; for she had risen and was
standing on the edge of the bent, the light wind stirring her dainty
raiment, one hand laid on her bosom, the other arm stretched downward and
clenched in her earnestness.

"It is true," she said, "it is true! We have proved it true!"

I think amidst my--something more than interest in her, and admiration
for her, I was beginning to wonder how it would all end. I had a
glimmering of fear of what might follow; of anxiety as to the remedy
which this new age might offer for the missing of something one might set
one's heart on. But now Dick rose to his feet and cried out in his
hearty manner: "Neighbour Ellen, are you quarrelling with the guest, or
are you worrying him to tell you things which he cannot properly explain
to our ignorance?"

"Neither, dear neighbour," she said. "I was so far from quarrelling with
him that I think I have been making him good friends both with himself
and me. Is it so, dear guest?" she said, looking down at me with a
delightful smile of confidence in being understood.

"Indeed it is," said I.

"Well, moreover," she said, "I must say for him that he has explained
himself to me very well indeed, so that I quite understand him."

"All right," quoth Dick. "When I first set eyes on you at Runnymede I
knew that there was something wonderful in your keenness of wits. I
don't say that as a