Children, children everywhere! Always there were children. Wherever he wandered, late as it was, during that westward pilgrimage, he saw them--the innocent, chief sufferers--bearers of the heaviest burdens. They were born to woe; nearly always were to die of it. Where was the justice, where the justification of their pain? Let comfortable sociologists prate; but why had they those hours and days of want and suffering merely to die? They had not offended. They had not broken laws of thrift, duty, love; yet they must endure evil and reap great harvests of the sins their forebears had sowed. It was pitiful, shameful, appalling. He saw little ones weary to death, forgotten, learning iniquities. The infinite waste of young humanity appalled him! Something of the nation’s life was decaying there, and so few seemed to care. He came abruptly to the square which had Liberty Hall at its corner. Before proceeding to the enjoyments awaiting him, he must calm and recover himself. He walked slowly along the three sides of the square. He was still agitated by the disclosures that slum-experience had brought him, so he walked again right round the inner circle of railings, and forced himself into the guest-man’s mood. He came, at last, to the crowded portal, begged and pushed his way through triple lines of packed spectators--for the most part women who had forgotten the lateness of the hour and their weariness in wonder and curiosity at the costumes of the guests--and joined the procession of the invited up red-carpeted steps. June was troubled. Liberty Hall gave her dismay. Armingham House had been stately, though somewhat oppressive; the loudness and glaring brilliance of this assembly--this over-painted caricature of what is splendid--bewildered her. It reminded her--unjustly--of prosperous public-houses. Geoffrey surrendered his hat and cape to a footman--the livery of the Mosses was moss-green and gold--and passed on to be received. He was welcome. Scions of the aristocracy had master-keys to that house, as also had the over-rich. The lady of Liberty Hall greeted him with heartiness. "Very glad to see you, Lord Geoffrey; come right in!" She was tall, thin and bony; framework _décolletée_. Her face was not happy. It was heavily lined, and bore the marks of ambition and strain. Head, neck, arms, and corsage were ablaze with diamonds. Three fortunes gleamed and sparkled upon her. A picture of the woman of the slums and the neglected infant flashed through Geoffrey’s mind. June, to whom always human beings were merely as shadows burlesquing reality, became actually afraid. Her wings were constantly quivering. There was a surging mob beyond this lady of jewels and angles--no less a mob because its members were prosperous and expensively dressed. Already the fairy had a foretaste of the vulgarity within, and feared and trembled with hate of it.