“Oh, brains aren’t everything,” answered Madge. “Some of the worst rotters the world has ever been cursed with have been brainy enough—men and women. We make too much fuss about brains; just as once upon a time we did about mere brute strength, thinking that was all that was needed to make a man great. Brain is only muscle translated into civilization. That’s not going to save us.”
“You’ve been thinking,” Joan accused her. “What’s put all that into your head?”
Madge laughed. “Mixing with so many brainy people, perhaps,” she suggested; “and wondering what’s become of their souls.”
“Be good, sweet child. And let who can be clever,” Joan quoted. “Would that be your text?”
Madge finished buttering her buns. “Kant, wasn’t it,” she answered, “who marvelled chiefly at two things: the starry firmament above him and the moral law within him. And they’re one and the same, if he’d only thought it out. It’s rather big to be good.”
They carried their tea into the sitting-room.
“Do you really think she’ll get over it?” asked Madge. “Or is it one of those things one has to say?”
“I think she could,” answered Joan, “if she would pull herself together. It’s her lack of will-power that’s the trouble.”
Madge did not reply immediately. She was watching the rooks settling down for the night in the elm trees just beyond the window. There seemed to be much need of coming and going, of much cawing.
“I met her pretty often during those months that Helen Lavery was running her round,” she said at length. “It always seemed to me to have a touch of the heroic, that absurd effort she was making to ‘qualify’ herself, so that she might be of use to him. I can see her doing something quite big, if she thought it would help him.”