ed; "but from the lowest abyss
one can still see the sky overhead. People's hearts are touched by the
spectacle of sin or the spectacle of suffering. Our Lord could not sin,
therefore He reached our sympathies by His Death and Sorrows. Of course,
if this life here were all, and this world were the only one, and we
were animals with less beauty than many of the inanimate things in
nature, and as much intelligence at best as the bees and birds and
ants--then the Pagan way might be quite admirable. But this isn't the
case, and so--and so----"

Sara laughed.

"We are a grotesque compromise between gods and creatures," she said;
"those of us who find this out get a little impatient with the false
position. You are less sentimental than I am. You take what I call the
hard view. It is too frigid for me. But I am making you late. All good
luck to-night!"

She waved her hand, and, returning to her own room, realised that she
had missed the object of her conversation. The attempt to excite
Brigit's jealousy had failed.

Nothing is so infectious as despair. Brigit sat quivering under the echo
of Sara's last words: "You take what I call the hard view." Was it,
then, such an easy matter to bury love in perpetual silence, to let
nature yield to fate, to stifle every human craving? The mention of
Robert's name and the news that he looked ill and careworn had stirred
all the unshed tears in her heart; she could not think, she could not
move, she could but realise that she had no right to be with him. And
sorrow seemed her province. There, surely, she and he might meet, join
hands, and speak once more face to face. She had not written to him
since that parting at Miraflores. But she would write now. This was her
letter--

MY DEAREST LIFE--You are my dearest and you are my life--so let me
say it now, even if I never say it again. I could be glad (if any
gladness were left in me) at your grief for Lord Reckage's death,
because it gives me an excuse for breaking my word and writing to
you. This is selfish, but nobody knows how much I have suffered, or
how much I suffer daily, hourly. I try to believe that it would
have been worse if we had never owned our love, never met again
after our first meeting. Darling, I can't be sure. Sometimes I wish
I had been born quite numb. I dare not complain, and yet it is
impossible to feel contented. Always, always there is a dreadful
pain in m