So there was Maggie stood in the way; and the solution found a way round Maggie. And there was lastly all the clatter of his friends, all the active disapproval of his elders; and the solution found an easy way around that. He could not hurt Gran; he could not conciliate Maggie; he could not face himself gossiped of, implored, advised, reproved; and the solution offered an easy way around it all. Easily winning Audrey to it,--her hands in his, his spirit possessing hers--he came to details. He had examined and arranged everything. He had made inquiries as to Registry Office marriages. They were both of age. There was a residence formality: well, she was coming on a visit to a girl friend in Kensington; he would take a room in a hotel in the district. They would meet at the Registry "one fine day." Long leave from his regiment was due. They would go on the continent--"all over the place, the most gorgeous time"--and afterwards--easy as all the rest was easy--Gran should be told. He ended: "Audrey--married!" And she: "Roly! ... Oh, Roly!" Comic were the word for such a thing. IV Comic the word; but if, instead, you choose to judge them and to consider preposterous his arguments of the case between his Gran and his Audrey and preposterous his solution of it, beg you remember that life is going to be an impossible affair for us, a thing to drive us mad, if we are going to judge it by the standard of the correct and noble characters that you and I possess. By some means or another we must stoop down to the level of our neighbours and try to judge from there. Dowered with all the virtues, as you and I are, it is the easiest thing in the world to be impatient with another's folly, to despise him for it, to indicate how little moral courage will rid him of its effects; nay, to go further, and to declare it inconceivable that such blunders and follies and misbehaviours, as for example those upon which Roly and his Audrey were now embarked, can really have been committed. But that is a stage too far. We must not run our excusable intolerance of folly to the length of calling impossible even the most absurd actions, even the most incredible weakness of character. The whole history of mankind results precisely from these absurdities and these incredibilities. On the one hand, we should still and should all be in Eden if it were not so; on the other, there is the distinctly moving thought that you and I, faultless, are dependent for our entertainment on exactly these impossibilities of character in others: but for them we should never enjoy the delicious thrill of being shocked, never (the thing is unthinkable) be able to thank God we are not as others are.