.  .  .  We  shall  have  much  to  learn — after  the  great
change.  .  .  .  And  much  to  endure.  And  I  think  we
will  need  all  the  kindness  that  we  can  give  each  other —
and  all  that  the  world  can  spare  us."


CHAPTER    X

It  was  slowly  becoming  evident  to  Neville  that
Valerie's  was  the  stronger  character — not  through  any
genius  for  tenacity  nor  on  account  of  any  domineering
instinct — but  because,  mistaken  or  othervrise  in  her  eth-
ical reasoning,  she  was  consistent,  true  to  her  belief,  and
had  the  courage  to  live  up  to  it.  And  this  made  her
convictions  almost  unassailable.
Slavery  to  established  custom  of  any  kind  she  smil-
ingly disdained,  refusing  to  submit  to  restrictions  which
centuries  of  social  usage  had  estaljlislied,  when  such
social  restrictions  and  limitations  hampered  or  annoyed
her.
Made  conscious  by  the  very  conventions  designed  to
safeguard  unconsciousness  ;  made  v.  ise  by  the  unwisdom
of  a  civilisation  which  required  ignorance  of  innocence,
she  had  as  yet  lost  none  of  her  sweetness  and  confidence
in  herself  and  in  a  world  which  she  considered  a  friendly
one  at  best  and,  at  worst,  more  silly  than  vicious.
Her  life,  tlie  experience  of  a  lonely  girlhood  in  the
world,  wide  and  varied  reading,  unwise  and  othenvise,
and  an  intelligence  which  needed  only  experience  and
training,  liad  hastened  to  a  premature  maturity  her
impatience  with  the  faults  of  civilisation.  And  in  the
honest  revolt  of  youth,  she  forgot  that  what  she  re-
jected was,  after  all,  civilisation  itself,  and  that  as  yet
there  had  been  offered  no  acceptable  substitute  for  its
faulty  codification.
276


THE    COMMON   LAW


To  do  one's  best  was  to  be  fearlessly  true  to  one's
convictions  and  let  God  judge;  that  was  her  only  creed.
