o live for God
and the poor, and every day she had to write: "Lady Rose Bright much
regrets that she is quite unable," etc., etc. Then, after those, she
would begin another trial--begging letters to her rich friends to help
her poor ones, or letters trying to get interest and influence. The
difficulties and the confusion of life in the modern Babylon weighed on
Rose in something of the same way that they tried Mark Molyneux. It
seemed to her that it must be safe and right to be doing so many
disagreeable things and to be very tired, too tired to enjoy pleasures
when they came her way. Constantly, one person was trying to throw
pleasures in her way; one person reminded old friends that Rose was in
town; one person suggested that Rose Bright, although she did not go to
parties, might come in to hear some great musician at a friend's house;
one person wanted to know her opinion on the last book; one person tried
to find out when he could take her anywhere in his motor. And this very
morning Rose had asked herself if this one friend ought to be allowed to
do all these things? Was she sure that she was quite fair to Edmund
Grosse?

It had been a day of fears and scruples. She had been unnerved when the
clergyman had called just to let her realise that the withdrawal of her
subscription had, in the end, meant the collapse of his little
orphanage; and when she was breaking down under this, Edmund had come
in, and how soothed and comforted she had felt by his presence! And
then the joy of his proposal as to the yacht! Her pulses beat with
delight; she felt a positive hunger for blue skies, blue water, blue
shores; a longing to get away from cares and muddles and badly-done jobs
and being misunderstood. Was it not horribly selfish, horribly cowardly?
Was it not the longing to stifle the sounds of pain, to shut her eyes to
the gloom of the misery about her, to shut her mind to the effort to
understand what was of practical good, and what was merely quack in the
remedies offered? Still, she realised to-night that she must get some
sort of rest; that part of all this gloom was physical. She would
understand and feel things more rightly if she went away for a bit.

But could she, ought she, to go away on Edmund's yacht?

Could Rose honestly feel quite sure that all his kindness meant nothing
more? She had never since she was eighteen, and wearing her first long
skirt, heard from him any word that need mean more than cousinly
affe