As Hadria drove over the winding upland road back to her home, her thoughts followed her sister into her new existence, and then turned wistfully backwards to the days that had been marked off into the past by Algitha's departure. How bright and eager and hopeful they had all been, how full of enthusiasm and generous ambitions! Even as they talked of battle, they stretched forth their hands for the crown of victory. At the last meeting of the Preposterous Society, Ernest had repeated a poem of his favourite Emerson, called _Days_, and the poem, which was familiar to Hadria, sounded in her memory, as the pony trotted merrily along the well-known homeward way. "Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb, like barefoot Dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and faggots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn." In spite of Hadria's memorable lecture of a year ago, it was still the orthodox creed of the Society, that Circumstance is the handmaid of the Will; that one can demand of one's days "bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky," and that the Days will obediently produce the objects desired. If one has but the spirit that can soar high enough to really be resolved upon stars, or the ambition sufficiently vaulting to be determined on kingdoms, then--so ran the dogma--stars and kingdoms would be forthcoming, though obstacles were never so determined. No member except Hadria had ever dreamt of insinuating that one might have a very pronounced taste for stars and kingdoms--nay, a taste so dominant that life would be worthless unless they were achieved--yet might be forced, by the might of events, to forego them. Hadria's own heresy had been of the head rather than of the heart. But to-day, feeling began to share the scepticism of the intellect. What if one's stars and kingdoms lay on the further side of a crime or a cruelty? What then was left but to gather up one's herbs and apples, and bear, as best one might, the scorn of the unjust Days?