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Page 42

Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. The veil was
rent.

To fit this existence of hers she had built herself a curious
creed, a philosophy of individualism, from behind which she flung
strange bombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities,
personal liberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for
modern law and the prophets. Nature, she claimed, was her law and
her prophet.

In her hard-working, virginal life her theories had wrought no
mischief. Temptation had been lacking to exploit them, and even
in the event of the opportunity it was doubtful whether she would
have had the strength of her convictions. Men love theories, but
seldom have the courage of them, and Anna Gates was largely
masculine. Women, being literal, are apt to absorb dangerous
doctrine and put it to the test. When it is false doctrine they
discover it too late.

Harmony was now a woman.

Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the
girl to harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see
Harmony's eyes widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs.
Nothing pleased her more than to pit her individualism against
the girl's rigid and conventional morality, and down her by some
apparently unanswerable argument.

On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument
took place--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of
mental fencing. Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at
home. Harmony had been practicing, and at the end she played a
little winter song by some modern composer. It breathed all the
purity of a white winter's day; it was as chaste as ice and as
cold; and yet throughout was the thought of green things hiding
beneath the snow and the hope of spring.

Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was
rather ashamed of her thought.

"It seems that way to me," she finished apologetically. "It
sounds rather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person
who composes certain things."

"And this gentleman who writes of winter?"

"I think he is very reserved. And that he has never loved any
one."

"Indeed!"

"When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it,
exactly as in books--the difference between a love story
and--and--"

"--a dictionary !"

"You always laugh," Harmony complained

"That's better than weeping. When I think of the rotten way
things go in this world I want to weep always."

"I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but
there are good ones."

"Where? Peter and you and I, I suppose."

"There are plenty of good men."

"What do you call a good man?"

Harmony hesitated, then went on bravely:--

"Honorable men."

Anna smiled. "My dear child," she said, "you substitute the code
of a gentleman for the Mosaic Law. Of course your good man is a
monogamist?"

Harmony nodded, puzzled eyes on Anna.

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