"Wrongheaded still?" she laughed, now gaily. "That question, like everything else, is, as Stephen says, 'in solution.' It's not my fate to settle questions, but it seems as if I couldn't help raising them!" To those who would see design in such matters--in the interaction of lives and minds--it might well seem that here she put her finger on a function to which she had never aspired, but for which she had been effectually used in several cases. She had raised questions in unquestioning people. Her management of her life put them on inquiry as to the foundations and the canons of their own. For Dick Dennehy even her chimney-pots had streaked the sky with notes of interrogation! She had been, as it were, a touchstone, proving true metal, detecting the base, revealing alloy; a test of quality, of courage, of faith; an explorer's shaft sunk deep in the ore of the human heart. She had struck strata scantily auriferous, she had come upon some sheer dross, yet the search left her not merely hopeful, but already enriched. Twice she had found gold--in the soldier who would not desert his flag even for her sake, in the believer who, for her soul's sake and his love of her, flung himself on the mercy of an affronted Heaven. Both could dare, sacrifice, and dedicate. They obeyed the call their ears heard, though it were to their own hurt--in this world or, mayhap, in another. There was the point of union between the man who forswore her for his loyalty's sake and the man who sheltered her against his creed. In the small circle of those with whom she had shared the issues of destiny she had unsettled much; of a certainty she had settled nothing. Things were just as much 'in solution' as ever; the welter was not abated. Man being imperfect, laws must be made. Man being imperfect, laws must be broken or ever new laws will be made. Winnie Maxon had broken a law and asked a question. When thousands do the like, the Giant, after giving the first-comers a box on the ear, may at last put his hand to his own and ponderously consider. * * * * * _Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED _Edinburgh_ * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE GOD IN THE CAR A CHANGE OF AIR A MAN OF MARK THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO PHROSO SIMON DALE THE KING'S MIRROR QUISANTÉ THE DOLLY DIALOGUES A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC TALES OF TWO PEOPLE THE GREAT MISS DRIVER End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Maxon Protests, by Anthony Hope