ght again be able to
conciliate her sisterly regard. She seemed to him to have passed
through an awakening of some kind, and to have bloomed both in mind and
body, with her feet on the threshold of vital experience, and the
thought that it was Guthrie who could evoke this upspringing of life
within her was very bitter to him.

He trod the valley of humiliation hour by hour, in these lonely days,
and found it a very dreary place. It was wretched to him to feel that
he had suddenly discovered his limitations. Not only could he not have
his will, could not taste the fruit of love which had seemed to hang
almost within his reach, but the old contented life seemed to have
faded and collapsed about him.

That night his aunt asked him about his book, and he said he was not
getting on well with it. She asked why, and he said that he had been
feeling that it was altogether too intellectual a conception; that he
had approached it from the side of REASON, as if people argued
themselves into faith, and had treated religion as a thesis which could
be successfully defended; whereas the vital part of it all, he now
thought, was an instinct, perhaps refined by inherited thought, but in
its practical manifestations a kind of choice, determined by a natural
liking for what was attractive, and a dislike of what was morally ugly.

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "that is true, I am sure. But it can be
analysed for all that, though I agree with you that no amount of
analysis will make one act rightly. But I believe," she went on, "that
clearness of view helps one, though not perhaps at the time. It is a
great thing to see what motives are merely conventional and convenient,
and to find out what one really regards as principles. To look a
conventional motive in the face deprives it of its power; and one can
gradually disencumber oneself of all sorts of complicated impulses,
which have their roots in no emotion. It is only the motives which are
rooted in emotion that are vital."

Then, after a pause, she said, "Of course I have seen of late that you
have been dissatisfied with something. I have not liked to ask you
about it; but if it would help you to talk about it, I hope you will.
It is wonderful how talking about things makes one's mind clear. It
isn't anything that others say or advise that helps one, yet one gains
in clearness. But you must do as you like about this, Howard. I don't
want to press you in any way."

"Thank you very much,"