"Yes--it's a pity anyone reads it!"--she answered--"But what are we to read? If low-minded and illiterate scavengers are employed to write for the newspapers instead of well-educated men, we must put up with the mud the scavengers collect. We know well enough that every journal is more or less a calendar of lies,--all the same we cannot blind ourselves to the great change that has come over manners and morals--particularly in relation to marriage. Of course the Press always chronicles the worst items bearing on the subject--" "The Press is chiefly to blame for it"--declared Rivardi. "Oh, I think not!" and Morgana smiled as she poured out a second cup of coffee--"The Press cannot create a new universe. No--I think human nature alone is to blame--if blame there be. Human nature is tired." "Tired?" echoed Rivardi--"In what way?" "In every way!"--and a lovely light of tenderest pity filled her eyes as she spoke--"Tired of the same old round of working, mating, breeding and dying--for no results really worth having! Civilisation after civilisation has arisen--always with strife and difficulty, only to pass away, leaving, in many cases, scarce a memory. Human nature begins to weary of the continuous 'grind'--it demands the 'why' of its ceaseless labour. Latterly, poor striving men and women have been deprived of faith--they used to believe they had a loving Father in Heaven who cared for them,--but the monkeys of the race, the atheists, swinging from point to point of argument and chattering all the time, have persuaded them that they are as Tennyson once mournfully wrote--" "Poor orphans of nothing--alone on that lonely shore, Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she bore!" "Can we wonder then that they are tired?--tired of pursuing a useless quest? Human nature is craving for a change--for a newer world--a newer race,--and those who see that Nature is NOT 'brainless' but full of intelligent conception, are sure that the change will come!" "And you are one of 'those who see'?--" said Rivardi, incredulously. "I do not say I am,--that would be too much self-assertion"--she answered--"But I hope I am! I long to see the world endowed more richly with health and happiness. See how gloriously the sun has risen! In what splendour of light and air we are sailing! If we can do as much as this we ought to be able to do more!" "We shall do more in time"--he said--"The advance of one step leads to another."