“I think it is wonderful myself,” said Ethelbert. “I have concluded that the core of Reginald’s nature is the love of truth; and that this core of his being has not yet been ruined by social abuses; and that this love of truth is a radical root, from which a resurrected life will arise. There is hope of a tree, though it be cut down, that it shall live again if the roots are healthy. The roots of his life are better than the visible growths that have appeared,” said Ethelbert. “Oh, let me come here, too! Let us both come!” cried Mrs. Mancredo, after the strange, tremblant silence; “I can’t keep away from here. I am so much happier here than I have ever been in my life; I feel so broken up and stripped of everything, somehow. Let me fetch down a few things. You can crowd together a little and give me two rooms; or better still, throw out an addition across the house. You can make new parlors—so—with a veranda round them, and give Regie the sunny half, and—and take me in and educate me, too. You’ve tossed me all up, somehow. At the rate I am going on I shall be a selfish old woman at fifty, and have done neither Regie nor myself nor anyone any good. But really, you know, he don’t deserve a bit of this at my hands. Do you know the night he had the shock, I felt as though—as though—” She stopped and looked at Ethelbert’s impassive face. “You have never asked me what there was between Regie and me,” she said. “Sharp as you are, you must have known I hated him. Well, yes,” hesitated Mrs. Mancredo, “in a sort, I hated him. Have you never wondered what there is between us? You don’t look as if you cared now.” “I should be sorry to have anything between him and his best development, or you and yours. All the rest does not amount to much either way at this terrible social crisis,” said Ethelbert, as she gazed down the long ages which had been leading on to this stage of general social, chaotic development, which is but an outward sign of the particular state of the aggregated individual. “And instead of feeling frightened at wickedness, and planning a punitive reform, the simple thing to do is to recognize these conditions as _stages_ at which the fomentation takes place, which always precedes clarification. A thorough clarification of society is at hand, the outcome of which will be, ‘the new order of the new age.’” “I begin to think so myself,” said Mrs. Mancredo, after a long pause, in which she had watched the thought-gleams in Ethel’s eyes. Then, vexed at her own perplexity, she said uneasily: “I wonder if anything would interest you that was not purely metaphysical or psychological? I mean—in fact—I want—that is—I wonder—