Sidwell wore a pained expression.

‘You judge her,’ she replied, ’far too coarsely.  No one is called upon to make an elaborate declaration of faith as often as such subjects are spoken of.  Sylvia thinks so differently from you about almost everything that, when she happens to agree with you, you are misled and misinterpret her whole position.’

‘I understand her perfectly,’ Buckland went on, in the same irritated voice.  ’There are plenty of women like her—­with brains enough, but utter and contemptible cowards.  Cowards even to themselves, perhaps.  What can you expect, when society is based on rotten shams?’

For several minutes he pursued this vein of invective, then took an abrupt leave.  Sidwell had a piece of grave counsel ready to offer him, but he was clearly in no mood to listen, so she postponed it.

A day or two after this, she received a letter from Sylvia.  Miss Moorhouse was anything but a good correspondent; she often confessed her inability to compose anything but the briefest and driest statement of facts.  With no little surprise, therefore, Sidwell found that the envelope contained two sheets all but covered with her friend’s cramped handwriting.  The letter began with apology for long delay in acknowledging two communications.

’But you know well enough my dilatory disposition.  I have written to you mentally at least once a day, and I hope you have mentally received the results—­that is to say, have assured yourself of my goodwill to you, and I had nothing else to send.’

At this point Sylvia had carefully obliterated two lines, blackening the page into unsightliness.  In vain Sidwell pored over the effaced passage, led to do so by a fancy that she could discern a capital P, which looked like the first letter of a name.  The writer continued: 

’Don’t trouble yourself so much about insoluble questions.  Try to be more positive—­I don’t say become a Positivist.  Keep a receptive mind, and wait for time to shape your views of things.  I see that London has agitated and confused you; you have lost your bearings amid the maze of contradictory finger-posts.  If you were here I could soothe you with Sylvian (much the same as sylvan) philosophy, but I can’t write.’

Here the letter was to have ended, for on the line beneath was legible ‘Give my love to Fanny’, but this again had been crossed out, and there followed a long paragraph: 

I have been reading a book about ants.  Perhaps you know all the wonderful things about them, but I had neglected that branch of natural history.  Their doings are astonishingly like those of an animal called man, and it seems to me that I have discovered one point of resemblance which perhaps has never been noted.  Are you aware that at an early stage of their existence ants have wings?  They fly—­how shall I express it?—­only for the brief time of their courtship and marriage and when these important