Mrs. Kilroy liked
to have one to welcome her when they had been out late, not for warmth
so much as for cheerfulness. The summer midnight was chilly enough,
however, for the gentle heat to be grateful; and Beth turned to the
blaze and gazed into it tranquilly. The clock on the mantelpiece
struck one. Roberts brought in a tray with refreshments on it, and set
it down on a small table beside Beth. Before she helped herself she
asked Mr. Pounce what he would have, but he curtly declined to take
anything. She shrugged her shoulders, and fell-to herself with a
healthy appetite.

"How can you--how can you?" he ejaculated several times.

"I'm hungry," she said, laughing, "and I really don't see why I
shouldn't eat."

"You have no feeling for me," he complained.

"I have a sort of feeling that you are posing," she answered bluntly;
"and I wish you wouldn't. You'd better have some sandwiches."

"How terribly complex life is!" he muttered.

"Life is pretty much what we make of it by the way we live it," she
rejoined, taking another sandwich. "We are what we allow ourselves to
be. The complexities come of wrong thinking and wrong doing. Right and
wrong are quite distinct; there is no mistaking one for the other. In
any dilemma we have only to think what is right to be done, and to do
it, and there is an end of all perplexities and complexities.
Principle simplifies everything."

"I see you have never loved," he declared, "or you would not think the
application of principle such a simple thing."

"It is principle that makes love last," Beth answered, "and introduces
something permanent into this weary world of change. There is nothing
in life so well worth living for as principle; the most exquisite form
of pleasure is to be found in the pain of sacrificing one's
inclinations in order to live up to one's principles--so much so that
in time, when principle and inclination become identical, and we cease
to feel tempted, something of joy is lost, some gladness that was wont
to mingle with the trouble."

"But principles themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out
of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not
come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and
exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable,
or for which they are inadequate."

"That is the hypocrisy of the vicious," Beth said, with her eyes fixed
meditatively on the fire, "the people who