"There is a new philosophy which has possessed me for months; the thought of a great man, which seizes upon us dull lesser creatures, and seems to give us, for a time at least, new eyes and ears, as though, like Melampus, we had caught the hidden language of the world! It rests on the notion of the endless creativeness and freedom of life. It is the negation of all fate, all predestination. _Nothing_ foreknown, nothing predestined! No _necessity_--no _anangke_--darling!--either in the world process, or the mind of God, that you and I should sit here to-day, heart to heart! It was left for our wills to do, our hearts to conceive, God lending us the world, so to speak, to work on! All our past cutting into--carving out--this present; all our past alive in the present; as all this present shall be alive in the future. There is no 'iron law' for life and will, beloved--they create, they are the masters, they are forever new. All the same!"--his tone changed--"I believe firmly that this rock knew from all eternity that you and I should sit here to-day!" Presently, Mary disengaged herself. Her hat was not what it had been; her hair had escaped its bounds, and must be rigorously put to rights. She sat there flushed and bareheaded, her hands working; while Meynell's eyes devoured her. "It is January, Richard, and the sun is sinking." "In your world perhaps, dear, not in mine." "We must go back to mother." She laid a hand on his. "We will go back to mother!" he said, joyously, with a tender emphasis on the word, without moving however. "Mary!--next to you I love your mother!" Mary's sweet face darkened a little; she buried it in her hands. Meynell drew them tenderly away. "All that affection can do to soften the differences between us, shall be done," he said, with his whole heart. "I believe too that the sense of them will grow less and less." Mary made no reply, except by the slight pressure of her fingers on his. She sat in an absorbed sadness, thinking of her mother's life, and the conflict which had always haunted and scorched it, between love and religion; first in the case of her husband, and then in that of her daughter. "But oh! how could I--how could I help it?" was the cry of Mary's own conscience and personality. She turned with painful eagerness to Meynell. "How did you think her?--how does she strike you?" "Physically?" He chose his words. "She is so beautiful! But--sometimes--I think she looks frail."