the full of its white blossoms. Those
clustering flower-stars, printed before him on the dark coat of the
night, produced in John more feeling than should have been caused by a
mere magnolia-tree; and he smoked somewhat furiously. Beauty, seeking
whom it should upset, seemed, like a girl, to stretch out arms and say:
"I am here!" And with a pang at heart, and a long ash on his cigar,
between lips that quivered oddly, John turned on his heel and retraced
his footsteps to the smoking-room. It was still deserted. Taking up a
Review, he opened it at an article on 'the Land,' and, fixing his eyes
on the first page, did not read it, but thought: 'That child! What
folly! Engaged! H'm! To that young--! Why, they're babes! And what is
it about her that reminds me--reminds me--What is it? Lucky devil,
Felix--to have her for daughter! Engaged! The little thing's got her
troubles before her. Wish I had! By George, yes--wish I had!' And with
careful fingers he brushed off the ash that had fallen on his lapel....

The little thing who had her troubles before her, sitting in her bedroom
window, had watched his white front and the glowing point of his cigar
passing down there in the dark, and, though she did not know that they
belonged to him, had thought: 'There's some one nice, anyway, who likes
being out instead of in that stuffy drawing-room, playing bridge, and
talking, talking.' Then she felt ashamed of her uncharitableness. After
all, it was wrong to think of them like that. They did it for rest after
all their hard work; and she--she did not work at all! If only Aunt
Kirsteen would let her stay at Joyfields, and teach her all that Sheila
knew! And lighting her candles, she opened her diary to write.

"Life," she wrote, "is like looking at the night. One never knows what's
coming, only suspects, as in the darkness you suspect which trees are
what, and try to see whether you are coming to the edge of anything....
A moth has just flown into my candle before I could stop it! Has it gone
quite out of the world? If so, why should it be different for us? The
same great Something makes all life and death, all light and dark, all
love and hate--then why one fate for one living thing, and the opposite
for another? But suppose there IS nothing after death--would it make me
say: 'I'd rather not live'? It would only make me delight more in life
of every kind. Only human beings brood and are discontented, and trouble
about future life. Whil