eeling; and women mostly detest, because,
in their secret hearts, they would like to be up there too! Personally
I have no use for pedestals. I am content to be _bon camarade_! As
for that sublime Desmond woman, I feel morally certain that she never
commits an indiscretion, or has a knot in her shoe-lace, or loses her
scissors!"

"Are you peculiarly lenient towards those three failings?"

"I am quite culpably lenient towards the whole tribe of human failings.
They are the salt of life. I have never really understood that
incessant harping on the mystery of pain and sin. The question, Why
should they be allowed to exist? seems to me simply fatuous. No world
worth living in could have been created without them. They are the
backbone of all drama; and I love drama inordinately. They put the
iron into men's souls, and the grit into their characters. Think what
a nauseating crew of sentimentalists we should be,

'If all had love, as every nest hath eggs,
And every head of maize her feathery cap.'

I, for one, should beg to be excused from spending three-score years
and ten on a planet full of sugar-plums and kisses!"

She left her perch on the railings, and stood erect, in an unconscious
attitude of defiance; and Garth watched her speculatively through
narrowed lids. He was wondering whether Mrs Desmond's remark that she
had persuaded Captain Lenox to go shooting beyond Chumba, instead of
deserting Dalhousie for the interior, might not be accountable for this
unusual burst of eloquence.

"I had no notion that you went in for studying big questions of that
kind," he remarked, with an amused air of interest.

"Studying them! But no! What call is there to study them? I have my
ears and eyes, and my priceless intuitions. It is enough. An artist
will learn more about life and character with the help of those three,
than all the _savants_ in creation could imbibe from a hecatomb of
books. Michel--where are you? What has been keeping you so quiet
since Mrs Desmond's departure?"

Michael, who promptly appeared on the threshold, held up a large
drawing-block for his sister's inspection.

"_Voila donc_! _Que dis-tu_? Is it not to the life?"

The picture was a rapid, delicate pastel study of Honor Desmond,
presenting her, as Michael had said, "to the life." The broad brow,
the short straight nose, the strength and tenderness of the mouth and
chin, the smile that hovered like a light in her serious ey