"passing emotion," and how to forget how vivid the emotion
was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at
root a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough,
and that men and women are personalities capable of
sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an
electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly.
We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the
doors of heaven may be shaken open. To Helen, at all
events, her life was to bring nothing more intense than the
embrace of this boy who played no part in it. He had drawn
her out of the house, where there was danger of surprise and
light; he had led her by a path he knew, until they stood
under the column of the vast wych-elm. A man in the
darkness, he had whispered "I love you" when she was
desiring love. In time his slender personality faded, the
scene that he had evoked endured. In all the variable years
that followed she never saw the like of it again.

"I understand," said Margaret--"at least, I understand
as much as ever is understood of these things. Tell me now
what happened on the Monday morning."

"It was over at once."

"How, Helen?"

"I was still happy while I dressed, but as I came
downstairs I got nervous, and when I went into the
dining-room I knew it was no good. There was Evie--I can't
explain--managing the tea-urn, and Mr. Wilcox reading the