Howards End

theory!"
    "But oh, Meg, what a theory!"
    "Why should you put things so bitterly, dearie?"
    "Because I’m an old maid," said Helen, biting her lip. "I can’t think why I go on like this myself." She shook off her sister’s hand and went into the house. Margaret, distressed at the day’s beginning, followed the Bournemouth steamer with her eyes. She saw that Helen’s nerves were exasperated by the unlucky Bast business beyond the bounds of politeness. There might at any minute be a real explosion, which even Henry would notice. Henry must be removed.
    "Margaret!" her aunt called. "Magsy! It isn’t true, surely, what Mr. Wilcox says, that you want to go away early next week?"
    "Not 'want,'" was Margaret’s prompt reply; "but there is so much to be settled, and I do want to see the Charles’s."
    "But going away without taking the Weymouth trip, or even the Lulworth?" said Mrs. Munt, coming nearer. "Without going once more up Nine Barrows Down?"
    "I’m afraid so."
    Mr. Wilcox rejoined her with, "Good! I did the breaking of the ice."
    A wave of tenderness came over her. She put a hand on either shoulder, and looked deeply into the black, bright eyes. What was behind their competent stare? She knew, but was not disquieted.

CHAPTER XXIII
    Margaret had no intention of letting things slide, and the evening before she left Swanage she gave her sister a thorough scolding. She censured her, not for disapproving of the engagement, but for throwing over her disapproval a veil of mystery. Helen was equally frank. "Yes," she said, with the air of one looking inwards, "there is a mystery. I can’t help it. It’s not my fault. It’s the way life has been made." Helen in those days was over–interested in the subconscious self. She exaggerated the Punch and Judy aspect of life, and spoke of mankind as puppets, whom an invisible showman twitches into love and war. Margaret pointed out that if she dwelt on this she, too, would eliminate the personal. Helen was silent for a minute, and then burst into a queer speech, which cleared the air. "Go on and marry him. I think you’re splendid; and if any one can pull it off, you will." Margaret denied that there was anything to "pull off," but she continued: "Yes, there is, and I wasn’t up to it with Paul. I can do only what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry, it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss. So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.' There! Because I’m uneducated. But you, you’re different; you’re a heroine."
    "Oh, Helen! Am I? Will it be as dreadful for poor Henry as all that?"
    "You mean to keep proportion, and that’s heroic, it’s Greek, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t succeed with you. Go on and fight with him and help him. Don’t ask me for help, or even for sympathy. Henceforward I’m going my own way. I mean to be thorough, because thoroughness is easy. I mean to dislike your husband, and to tell him so. I mean to make no concessions to Tibby. If Tibby wants to live with me, he must lump me. I mean to love you more than ever. Yes, I do. You and I have built up something real, because it is purely spiritual. There’s no veil of mystery over us. Unreality and mystery begin as soon as one touches the body. The popular view is, as usual, exactly the wrong one. Our bothers are over tangible things—money, husbands, house–hunting. But Heaven will work of itself."
    Margaret was grateful for this expression of affection, and answered, "Perhaps." All vistas close in the unseen—no one doubts it—but Helen closed them rather too quickly for her taste. At every turn of speech one was confronted with reality and the absolute. Perhaps Margaret grew too old for metaphysics, perhaps Henry was weaning her from them, but she felt that there was something a little unbalanced in the mind that so readily shreds the visible. The business man who assumes that this life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth. "Yes, I see, dear; it’s about half–way between," Aunt Juicy had hazarded in earlier years. No; truth, being alive, was not half–way between anything. It was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though