371
address to herself.
"Tell me how to answer it, please," she said, handing it to Meynell with a twitching lip. "It is a language I don't understand! And why did they take her to such a play?"
Meynell shared her disquiet. For the Greek conception of a remorseless fate, as it is forever shaped and embodied in the tale of Oedipus, had led Hester apparently to a good deal of subsequent browsing in the literature--the magazine articles at any rate--of French determinism; and she rattled through some of her discoveries in this reckless letter:
"You talked to me so nicely, dear Mrs. Elsmere, that last evening at Upcote. I know you want me--you want everybody--'to be good!'
"But 'being good' has nothing to do with us.
"How can it?--such creatures, such puppets as we are!
"Poor wretch, Oedipus! He never meant any one any harm--did he?--and yet--you see!
"'_Apollo, friends, Apollo it was, that brought all these my woes, my sore, sore woes!--to pass_.'
"Dear Mrs. Elsmere!--you can't think what a good doctrine it is after all--how it steadies one! What chance have we against these blundering gods?
"Nothing one can do makes any difference. It is, really very consoling if you come to think of it; and it's no sort of good being angry with Apollo!"
* * * * *
"Part nonsense, part bravado," said Catharine, raising clear eyes, with half a smile in them, to Meynell. "But it makes one anxious."
His puckered brow showed his assent.
"As soon as the trial is over--within a fortnight certainly--I shall run over to see them."
* * * * *
Meynell and Mary travelled to town together, and Mary was duly deposited for a few days with some Kensington cousins.
On the night of their arrival--a Saturday--Meynell, not without some hesitation, made an appearance at the Reformers' Club, which had been recently organized as a London centre for the Movement, in Albemarle Street.
It was no sooner known that he was in the building than a fl