He forgot that he was living in this new age in which something like occult powers are given to the “pure in heart,” who, seeing God, who is All, and in all, necessarily must see the truth as to the conditions which fill society. His spiritual and intuitional faculties were not dead, but sealed up, and enswathed in cerements of flesh. And so, as he now himself realized, he had nothing but a man’s feelings, hot, blind and passionate, to oppose to the percipient intelligence, that, cool and pure, looked steadily into the seething caldron of his heart. “If a man’s feelings are orderly, beautiful life, I care just as much for them,” she said again slowly. And as he stood before the Virgin Mother grace in her, an ineffable longing for purity and new creation took possession of him. He covered his eyes and sat down on the steps. “Mine were beautiful when I was three years old,” he said, “orderly, beautiful life. O good God, yes, they were!” It was a cry of remorse to his Creator, and Ethelbert understood it so. “I believe that readily, Reginald,” she said, simply; “and I have limitless reverence for them; they were as sweet as this bud.” He took from her hand the exquisite moss-covered wonder, and sat looking at it, while Ethelbert laid the mutilated rose, with its upgathered petals, on a book in her lap. “You mean that is about what my life is worth now,” said he, pointing at the leaves and torn blossom. “You choose to do it yourself,” said Ethelbert. “Who cares?” was the angry response, for he had often sentimentalized with girls over his ruined hopes, and had so led up to sweet flirtations; but Ethelbert’s remark and the level look of her eyes, nipped that sort of a thing in the bud; and his “ugly” was rising at about the rate of ten degrees a second, when she said: “I do.” “On your honor, do you?” he asked huskily. “On honor, yes, I care,” she said. He looked white and kept the bud in his hand. She wished to help him, but she did not wish to preach nor sentimentalize. “You have abused this rosebud fearfully,” rising and examining one on the bush. “You have shattered the rose and the leaves. Here is a bud which you have marred, but—” she stooped to examine it more closely; “but I see it is not beyond the power of performing good uses still and of opening to mature life.”