“No, indeed,” said Howard slowly, “I think it is a good case.  The very last thing I would do is to claim to be fully equipped for the understanding of all mysteries.  My difficulty is that while there are two explanations of a thing—­a transcendental one and a material one—­I hanker after the material one.  But it isn’t because I want to disbelieve the transcendental one.  It is because I want to believe it so much, that I feel that I must exclude all possibility of its being anything else.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Graves, “and I think you are perfectly right; one must follow one’s conscience in this.  I don’t want you to swallow it whole at all.  I want you, and I am sure that Maud wants you, just to wait and see.  Don’t begin by denying the possibility of its being a transcendental thing.  Just hold the facts in your mind, and as life goes on, see if your experience confirms it, and until it does, do not pretend that it does.  I don’t claim to be omniscient.  Something quite definite, of course, lies behind the mystery of life, and whatever it is, is not affected by what you or I believe about it.  I may be wholly and entirely mistaken, and it may be that life is only a chemical phenomenon; but I have kept my eyes open, and my heart open; and I am as sure as I can be that there is something very much bigger behind it than that.  I myself believe that each being is an immortal spirit, hampered by contact with mortal laws, and I believe that consciousness and emotion are something superior even to chemistry.  But to use emotion to silence people would be entirely repugnant to me, and equally to Maud.  She isn’t the sort of woman who would be content if you only just said you believed her.  She would hate that!”

“Well,” said Howard, smiling, “you are two very wonderful women, and that’s the truth.  I am not surprised at your wisdom—­it is wisdom—­because you have lived very bravely and loved many people; but it’s amazing to me to find such courage and understanding in a girl.  Of course you have helped her—­but I don’t think you could have produced such thoughts in her unless they had been there to start with.”

“That’s exactly what I have tried to say,” said Mrs. Graves.  “Where did Maud’s fine mixture of feeling and commonsense come from?  Her mother was a woman of some perception, but after all she married Frank, and Frank with all his virtue isn’t a very mature spirit!”

“Ah,” said Howard, “my marriage has done everything for me!  What a blind, complacent, petty ass I was—­and am too, though I at least perceive it!  I see myself as an elderly donkey, braying and capering about in a paddock—­and someone leans over the fence, and all is changed.  I ought not to think lightly of mysteries, when all this astonishing conspiracy has taken place round me, to give me a home and a wife and a whole range of new emotions—­how Maud came to care for me is still the deepest wonder of all—­a loveless prig like me!”