e of a
friend. I don't understand Robert entirely. Do you?"

"Yes, I understand him."

"I wonder how you came to love each other. I suppose it happened for the
best. But it seems such a pity"--she paused and then repeated the
words--"it seems such a pity that all doesn't come right--in the
old-fashioned way."

"It has come right, dear," said Brigit; "perfectly right."

"You try to think so."

"I know it. His father sinned, and my father sinned. We were born for
unhappiness. Unhappiness and misgivings are in our very blood."

"But how unjust!"

"No, dearest, on the contrary, it is strict justice. The laws of the
universe are immutable. You might as well ask that fire should only burn
sometimes--that it may be water, or air, or earth to suit sentimental
occasions."

"I don't like to see you so sensible--it's--it's _unlikely_."

Brigit smiled at the word--a favourite one with Pensee when persons and
events differed from the serene, unreasoned fiction which she called her
experience.

"How can you call anything unlikely?" asked the girl. "I ought never to
have been born at all, and Life has made no provision for me. She is
boisterous and homely--like a housekeeper at an inn. She doesn't know
me, and she has prepared no room for me. But I may rest on the
staircase--that's under shelter at least."

"What whimsical ideas, darling!"

"Ah, to feel as I feel, you must have had my parents. You mustn't
suppose that I woke up one morning and saw the reason for all my
troubles. The reason did not come as though it were the sun shining into
the room. Oh, no! I found no answer for a long, long time. But I feel it
now. My father could not take me into his world, and my mother's
world--_I_ could not take. They wished to know that I was protected, so
they found some one who knew the story, and knew both worlds. I was
grateful, because I didn't understand. And when I understood I was still
grateful, but I couldn't accept the terms. My marriage was not so
terrible as many marriages. Yet it was terrible enough. Don't let us
talk of it, Pensee. It is hopeless to quarrel with logic. Science is
calm--as calm as the hills."

"And Robert?" said the older woman. "What about Robert?"

"His father was a Dominican. The Church will have her own again. Be
quite sure of that!

_'Thy justice is like the great mountains.
Thy judgments are a great deep.'_

In God's way, all will come right. Every debt must be paid."

Altho