‘Talking of Nurse Molly,’ she said, ‘really, she must be terribly vain. Morgan tells me she lights all the candles she can get together, and then sits and looks at herself in the glass. The servants are perfectly scandalized. And when she goes away from the room, she never dreams of putting the candles out. She leaves them all burning quite happily, and never thinks about them again. Such a sinful waste--yes? And she might set these old wooden rooms on fire any day, by her carelessness.’ Isabel ignored her cousin’s intervention, and went back to the original topic. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘I have atoned for my wickedness of the past with this broken leg of mine. What I want to do is to lay up for myself a great fat store of merit, so as to go on getting happier and happier in all the later stages of my existence.’ ‘Yes, but before one can attain the perfect happiness,’ replied Kingston, ‘remember that one has to lose the desire for it. After ages and ages of purification, one leaves the last trace of desire behind--even the desire for good. Then one becomes the perfect knowledge which is the perfect peace.’ ‘So dreadfully chilly it sounds--yes?’ said Gundred. ‘Well, but the warmth of life is also the torment of life,’ replied Kingston. ‘Desire may be as warm and pleasant as possible, but all desire is sorrow. Without desire there is no disappointment, no suffering, none of the horrible things in life that we all want to get away from.’ ‘Would one rather sacrifice desire for the sake of getting rid of sorrow, or is desire so pleasant that one would put up with sorrow to retain desire? I suppose desire is very painful and all the rest of it, but it does make life wonderfully interesting, and one’s days would be deadly lonely without it.... I don’t know that I want the perfect peace, as yet, Kingston. Perhaps when my soul has grown a few centuries older. At present all I want is to lay up for myself a supply of happiness to go on with.’ ‘You can only do that,’ he answered, ‘through suffering--self-abnegations, martyrdoms, and all sorts of uncomfortable strenuous virtues. By despising pain and bearing it for others, you may attain to happiness. Not simply by sitting quiet and saying you want to acquire merit. You must go through dreadful things cheerfully if you hope to lay up merit.’ ‘Nothing for nothing is the rule, evidently,’ said Isabel, ‘in morality as well as in commerce. So tiresome, when everyone longs to get bargains, and buy a pound’s worth for half a crown. But when happiness comes to the hammer, it always fetches its full price, I suppose, in whatever market you buy it.’ ‘Well, Gundred, what do you think?’ asked Kingston. ‘Talking of hammers,’ replied Gundred, ‘there are the strangest thumpings going on upstairs. Don’t you hear? Hammerings and bumpings and knockings. Do you think Nurse Molly can be nailing up pictures?’