Lady St. Craye's face was serious and rather flushed, like that of a timid child.
"My dear mother, do not for a moment imagine that I object," said Alison rather impatiently. "It is merely the principle of the thing that is all wrong."
But she did not, as Zella had half feared she might, propose that they should halve the labours of John and William.
"My mother is one of those women whose great fear in life is that they may hurt someone," Alison informed Zella that evening; "whereas in point of fact she is like a flower—harmless, charming. A Christmas rose, perhaps, that imagines itself to possess the deadly qualities of nightshade; whereas it is the most scentless and innocent of decorations. Yes," said Alison, thoughtfully weighing her own simile with some complacency, "that describes my mother—a harmless, decorative piece of still-life."
Zella felt annoyed with herself because she knew that she was inwardly shocked at Alison's impersonal dissecting of her mother.
"She is very devoted to you," was the nearest she could compass to an equally dispassionate comment.
Alison shrugged her shoulders with an exaggeratedly foreign gesture.
"No doubt. It is part of the conventional widow's equipment to adore her only child, and my mother is conventional to the tips of her exceedingly pretty fingers. She does not know me, but she remains serenely unconscious of that."
"She does not understand you?"
"How should she? I am of another mould—a feminine, a thing of ready smiles and tears and blushes— all surface."
"Ah," said Zella, deeply anxious not to stem the tide of what she regarded as flattering confidences, but utterly unable to think of any rejoinder adequate to the occasion.
"I have evolved myself spiritually and mentally," pursued Alison thoughtfully, and with that deep absorption which is accorded only to the topic of selfevolution.
"My religion, my character, everything, I have had to make for myself."
"What is your religion?" asked Zella, convinced that, whatever it was, it would be nothing orthodox.
"I am a Theosophist, in so far as I am anything. Not that Theosophy is a creed; it has merely taken the heart out of all the creeds, and welded the whole into that glorious law which your Prophet set forth so admirably: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'"
Zella felt a sudden shock, as though Alison had worded her theory most irreverently.
"Simply Love," repeated the Theosophist dreamily. "It is very easy, and ah, Zella! life becomes almost beautiful in spite of its pain, and it would be wholly so if only everyone could see as we do. So many of us fail to recognize the Divine lurking in every human soul, in every bird and insect, in every blade of grass!"
She is the exquisite eternal
Zella thought wistfully that a certainty of the all pervadingness of the Divine must indeed alter the values of life; but Alison's words had nevertheless failed to carry any real conviction, or any but the most superficial of thrills.
"I myself have thought a good deal about Catholicism," she began shyly.
Alison looked at her kindly, but lost her expression of rapt intensity.
"Ah," she said lightly, "many of us go through that stage, and the symbolism of Rome has its poetical attraction. But at present, my dear Zella, it is time to go and dress for dinner."
XXII
"ISN'T there anyone whom you would like to ask to dinner here before you go, Zella dear? We might make up a little theatre-party," said Lady St. Craye.
Zella could not think of anyone whom she knew well enough or wished to ask to dinner, but thought it would sound childish and countrified to say so, so she exclaimed gratefully, "Oh, thank you so much. How very kind of you to think of it!" in order to gain time.
"Thursday night would do," said Lady St. Craye kindly.
Zella had an inspiration.
"I should rather like to ask my cousin, James Lloyd-Evans," she said shyly.
"Yes, do, dear, that will be very nice. I think he is rather a friend of Alison's."
"James Lloyd-Evans is a youth of parts," conceded Alison graciously, " and he certainly understands music."
"He is a great admirer of Alison's 'cello-playing," said Lady St. Craye innocently.
Zella was rather amused, but looked forward to impressing James by her friendship with the gifted Miss St. Craye.
Impressiveness, however, was not destined to be the keynote of the evening.
Zella was ready before her ever-unpunctual hostess, and before Alison, who had walked upstairs ten minutes before dinner, remarking that her body should never be the master of her soul.
Zella accordingly received James alone.
The sense of intimacy conferred by the near relationship was pleasant to both of them, and James took instant advantage of it by inquiring:
"Well, what do you think of Miss St. Craye?"
Zella hesitated for a moment, then decided that James would expect admiration, but leavened by impartial criticism.
"She is rather—wonderful," she observed slowly, and quite unconsciously borrowing from Alison's own vocabulary.
Very," said James with an odd emphasis.
"Utterly unlike other people, of course, and I dare say her very unconventionally causes her to be misunderstood by ordinary minds," said Zella, remembering her Aunt Marianne's strictures. "But she has a splendid brain, of course, and knows how to use it. There is nothing she hasn't read, I believe."
"I don't suppose she's ever condescended to read the 'Pickwick Papers,' which would do her all the good in the world," observed James coolly. "Though she's quite capable of going through them without a smile."
"When I say read," said Zella with some dignity, "I mean serious reading."
"Kant and Hegel, to wit, I suppose. Don't you go and follow Miss Alison's taste in literature, Zella. I hate girls to have a smattering of that sort of thing, and for those who read in earnest it's worse still."
"Do you mean that Alison doesn't read in earnest?" asked Zella, guiltily conscious of a semi-resolution that had formed itself on hearing Alison's frequent allusions to the very writers in question.
"I should think she was much too busy wondering what Miss Alison St. Craye thought of Emmanuel Kant, to have time to look for his meaning."
"I see what you mean," said Zella, hedging.
"It's a very common form of self-deception, I suppose," began James in the old instructive voice. "I mean, so many people seem to do their reading for the
