wife, the brother, the friend, can temporarily blind
themselves with the blinkers of false hope and can blunt the stabbing
spear of hideous fear with sharp-edged reasoning, but the
_mother_--never.

You cannot deceive her with a smile, nor can distance hide your
distress from her; you cannot, if you could be so minded, conceal your
joy from her, nor can you hurt her with a wound that will not heal.

Go to her with your hands swelling from the sting of the wasp you found
in the stolen fruit, or stained with crime; or your shoes wet through
with the mire of the by-ways in which you have been straying, and what
will she do? She will sit you down in front of the glowing fire of her
love, warm your straying feet, wash away the stain in the bitter waters
of her tears, and then dry them with her smile.

And you can go on straying--if you could be so minded--until seven
million seventy-times-seven, and you will find her just the same.

It is not forgiveness; it is Love.

And it was Love which, when there came no answer to her call, urged
Jill to get her camel to its knees.

Over twenty years had passed since Jill Carden, the English girl, had
first tried her 'prentice hand upon the obstreperous camel. She had
ridden out into the desert under the stars with her desert lover; she
had, strong in a great love, fearlessly climbed the high wall of racial
distinction crowned with the spikes of custom and convention; she had
watched the seed of happiness burst and blossom until it had grown into
a great tree; but she had forgotten that no tree, however deep its
roots, however strong its branches, is safe, so long as Fate, in senile
jealousy, can tear the heavens into ribbons with her hellish lightning.

The camel, lurching and groaning, staggering and heaving, got to its
knees in just the same way as Taffadaln had done over twenty years ago;
just as the camel will do twenty centuries hence, if it has not become
extinct through some button, or wire, or wave, or ray which will have
turned the desert into a kind of international piazza into the middle
of which, for our post-prandial coffee and cigarette, we shall be
conveyed in a few moments by means of something wireless, for so much
cash down in advance, which will include the tip to the Bedouin waiter.

One can see empires and deserts disappearing, but the tipping
system--never!

And as Wellington would not let go of the book his mistress had left
him as guarantee of her re