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emphasise the difference. Their clothes and hands and general suggestion told of a country life passed within the bounds of ease. Rhoda’s dress was contrived with some cleverness, Fanny’s better cut and simpler, and in no need of contrivance.
    â€œDo you call Hamish Challoner ‘Hamish’ to his face?” she said.
    â€œNo, only in my mind. But it is in our minds that we live much of our life.”
    â€œI seem to live most of mine in this room. Not that that need make much difference. I wonder why the Challoner men come to see us.”
    â€œAs the Challoner woman does not?” said Rhoda, smiling. “Why should she, if she does not wish? I have a feeling that Sir Edwin likes my friendship. I do not know why.”
    â€œI do. He ought to like it. It makes him feel he is wise, and so that you are.”
    â€œWell, I have my gleams of light. And if they can illumine the path of another, so much the better.”
    â€œI wonder how it feels to be soon to die. Would you be curious about the things you were not to know or see?”
    â€œNo, curiosity would not be my feeling. No, not just that.”
    â€œYou would feel deeper things?”
    â€œYes, deeper, wider, different,” said Rhoda, looking before her.
    â€œNo wonder Sir Edwin thinks you are wise. He has no excuse for not doing so. If we pass over what is before our eyes, what is the good of its being there?”
    â€œIt may be just a little good, just a little.”
    â€œWell, we are laggards,” said Sir Edwin, entering in front of his brother. “I fear that never might have been better than as late as this. We did not judge our time.”
    â€œWe judged it,” said Hamish, “but I did not make the pace. The never is far enough on the way for the lateness to be forgiven.”
    â€œNow you will tell us just how you are,” said Rhoda.
    â€œAs I have done so, I will not again. Ill fortune does not add to us. And to be at one’s end is nothing better. We can only be lessened by it.”
    â€œBy being on the edge of the solution?” said Rhoda, looking down and just uttering the words, with a glanceat Sir Edwin. “About to know the unknowable? No, no.
    â€œI do not look to that. The dead past buries its dead. That is how it is about to serve me.”
    â€œThe past and the future are alive. We add to them day by day. The present owes homage to them. And we in the present give it.”
    â€œDoes your sister give her homage to anything?” said Hamish, smiling.
    â€œNot to people’s past,” said Fanny. “There does not seem enough reason. They are too little pleased with it themselves. And not much to my own so far.”
    â€œWe will pay homage to Fanny’s youth,” said Rhoda. “She is twelve years younger than I am. I remember the day when she was born.”
    â€œI am not sure that that is homage,” said Hamish. “Do you pay it to anything, Edwin?”
    â€œSometimes to what is done or thought. Seldom to what comes of it.”
    â€œAh, the lesson of our experience!” said Rhoda, turning towards him. “How I give it my homage! And some of what lies ahead! How we should bow before those who face it! There is the need for courage.”
    â€œIt is good of you to see my place. And to see my brother’s. I do not know which is the harder.”
    â€œI know. The one that demands the most. And you know, though you must not say it. When a thing is too much to face, we must accept it and be silent.”
    â€œYes, it is too much for me. That is self-pity, andmust be condemned. And I am uncertain how to feel to my brother. Pity of any kind has a poor name. And some of us would do ill without it.”
    â€œI feel no pity. What I feel is something else, something not even akin. I feel what I have said. As you confront things full and unafraid, you will remember that I feel it?”
    â€œI am afraid. It is dark before