“Yes,” she thought to herself, “Muriel must be impelled by some pretty desperate attraction to give up her life to this sort of thing. It will make her old before her time. And as for the people here, her influence will probably cease as most influence does with her presence, and trickle off them as easily as water off a duck’s back. As for me, I suppose I might as well be _here_ as anywhere else—now.” She looked at the sky and wondered what poets saw in it. It suggested to her nothing but the need of a broom. She was tired out when she reached rooms over the club, and glad of the tea Muriel had prepared for her. Muriel could not stay, for it was the time when her girls came out of the factory, and she must be ready to meet them. She was in one of her merriest and brightest moods. The gloom of the outside world could not touch her; even the sordid misery of the streets she had visited that afternoon only seemed to her vistas of future sunshine. She believed in no sympathy that stopped at sorrow; but it was because she believed so deeply in the reality of sorrow that she knew the certainty of joy. “What makes you so happy?” said Cynthia wistfully; “I see nothing to cause it.” Muriel wrinkled her eyebrows as she always did when puzzled. Geoff called it her “frowning for a vision,” and compared it to a sailor’s whistling for a wind. At last the partial vision came. “I don’t see why it should be so difficult to be happy,” she said. “All that one hasn’t got is bound to come some day; all that one truly _has_ will never go. And when one is quite sure of that oneself, it is beautiful to be able to encourage one’s bit of the world to go on waiting for _their_ bright side. And how good and bright and dear things really are if we only come to look through them, and don’t make _culs-de-sac_ of sorrows. If love is the key of the world, joy is the hand that turns it, I feel sure. To make a creed of joy and a fact of love is to win half the battles, and be ready to fight the other half. But you know all this just as well as I do, and practise it far better—so what’s the use of talking? Simple things become mysteries directly you try to explain them. Mind you rest and sleep. I’ll be back for supper,” and she disappeared. It grew dark in the room afterwards. CHAPTER XIII “This world’s judgment cries ‘Consequences,’ and leaves it to a higher court to take account of Aims.” IT was decided that one more effort should be made to rescue Muriel Dallerton. Mary Huntly, persuaded by her husband, wrote asking her for two days early in the season. Cynthia peremptorily ordered her to go, and she went. The weather in the opening charm of June would to most people have been better spent in the country; only London lovers felt the greater charm of the full, bright season set in the green freshness of the Park.