What was she to do, what was she to do, in face of this terrible
diffidence?

It was all so different in her own home. Her father may have had his own
misgivings, but he kept them to himself. Perhaps he had no very profound
belief in this world of ours, this society which we have elaborated with
so much effort, only to find ourselves elaborated to death at last. But
Godfrey Marshall was of tough, rough fibre, not without a vein of
healthy cunning through it all. It was for him a question of winning
through, and leaving the rest to heaven. Without having many illusions
to grace him, he still _did_ believe in heaven. In a dark and
unquestioning way, he had a sort of faith: an acrid faith like the sap of
some not-to-be-exterminated tree. Just a blind acrid faith as sap is
blind and acrid, and yet pushes on in growth and in faith. Perhaps he was
unscrupulous, but only as a striving tree is unscrupulous, pushing its
single way in a jungle of others.

In the end, it is only this robust, sap-like faith which keeps man going.
He may live on for many generations inside the shelter of the social
establishment which he has erected for himself, as pear-trees and currant
bushes would go on bearing fruit for many seasons, inside a walled
garden, even if the race of man were suddenly exterminated. But bit by
bit the wall-fruit-trees would gradually pull down the very walls that
sustained them. Bit by bit every establishment collapses, unless it is
renewed or restored by living hands, all the while.

Egbert could not bring himself to any more of this restoring or renewing
business. He was not aware of the fact: but awareness doesn't help much,
anyhow. He just couldn't. He had the stoic and epicurean quality of his
old, fine breeding. His father-in-law, however, though he was not one bit