‘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?’
‘Running pins into the fringe, I should think,’ replied Kingston, with a touch of petulance. Certainly Nurse Molly was making the oddest noise in her room overhead. In the silence that followed Kingston’s suggestions her unmethodical clatterings could be distinctly heard.
‘We must certainly ask her to be quiet—yes?’ said Gundred. Then she rose and went to the window. ‘Why should it be so stifling in here?’ she went on. ‘There is quite a gale outside. Only listen.’ She paused, and the roar of a great rushing wind was clearly evident.
‘The wind seems to get up very suddenly on these coasts,’ said Kingston.
‘Oh yes,’ answered Gundred; ‘all in a minute. Especially so late in the year. That is what makes the heat so extraordinary.’ She peered curiously out into the darkness. ‘Why, Kingston,’ she exclaimed, ‘it is actually snowing. How perfectly astonishing! Quite a number of snowflakes are falling. And Nurse Molly’s illumination is really too scandalous; I can see it glowing quite far out into the night, throbbing and flickering.’ She pulled back the catch, and threw the little window wide.
Instantly, from above, a long, keen shaft of pure flame curled swiftly down into the room, licked round the casement like a dragon’s tongue, and was gone again. Gundred had self-possession enough to close the window, then she staggered back. The roaring sound overhead was louder now than ever.