"I remember Paul at breakfast," said Helen quietly. "I
shall never forget him. He had nothing to fall back upon.
I know that personal relations are the real life, for ever
and ever.

"Amen!"

So the Wilcox episode fell into the background, leaving
behind it memories of sweetness and horror that mingled, and
the sisters pursued the life that Helen had commended. They
talked to each other and to other people, they filled the
tall thin house at Wickham Place with those whom they liked
or could befriend. They even attended public meetings. In
their own fashion they cared deeply about politics, though
not as politicians would have us care; they desired that
public life should mirror whatever is good in the life
within. Temperance, tolerance, and sexual equality were
intelligible cries to them; whereas they did not follow our
Forward Policy in Thibet with the keen attention that it
merits, and would at times dismiss the whole British Empire
with a puzzled, if reverent, sigh. Not out of them are the
shows of history erected: the world would be a grey,
bloodless place were it entirely composed of Miss
Schlegels. But the world being what it is, perhaps they
shine out in it like stars.

A word on their origin. They were not "English to the
backbone," as their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the
other band, they were not "Germans of the dreadful sort."