. She will be mated; she will have the right
to call him Matey. A certain Browny called him Matey. She lived and
died. A certain woman apes Browny's features and inherits her passion,
but has forfeited her rights. Were she, under happiest conditions,
to put her hand in his, shame would burn her. For he is just--he is
Justice; and a woman bringing him less than his due, she must be a
creature of the slime!

This was the shadowy sentiment that made the wall of division between
them. There was no other. Lord Ormont had struck to fragments that
barrier of the conventional oath and ceremonial union. He was unjust--he
was Injustice. The weak may be wedded, they cannot be married; to
Injustice. And if we have the world for the buttress of injustice, then
is Nature the flaring rebel; there is no fixed order possible. Laws
are necessary instruments of the majority; but when they grind the sane
human being to dust for their maintenance, their enthronement is the
rule of the savage's old deity, sniffing blood-sacrifice. There cannot
be a based society upon such conditions. An immolation of the naturally
constituted individual arrests the general expansion to which we step,
decivilizes more, and is more impious to the God in man, than temporary
revelries of a licence that Nature soon checks.

Arrows of thoughts resembling these shot over the half of Aminta's mind
not listening. Her lover's head was active on the same theme while he
spoke. They converged to it from looks crossing or catching profiles, or
from tones, from a motion of hand, from a chance word. Insomuch that
the third person present was kept unobservant only by her studious and
humble speculations on the young schoolmaster's grand project to bring
the nationalities together, and teach Old England to the Continent--the
Continent to Old England: our healthy games, our scorn of the lie,
manliness; their intellectual valour, diligence, considerate manners.

'Just to name a few of the things for interchange,' said Weyburn. 'As to
method, we shall be their disciples. But I look forward to our fellows
getting the lead. No hurry. Why will they? you ask in petto. Well, they
're emulous, and they take a thrashing kindly. That 's the way to learn
a lesson. I 've seen our fellows beaten and beaten--never the courage
beaten out of them. In the end, they won and kept the field. They have a
lot to learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas. They lose heaps
of time before they can