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She paused,
feeling that justice demanded that Lady Rowley should have a right of
reply. But Lady Rowley had not a word to say, and Wallachia Petrie went
on. 'I cannot adapt my body to the sweet savours and the soft luxuries
of the outer world with any comfort to my inner self, while the
circumstances of the society around me are oppressive to my spirit.
When our war was raging all around me I was light-spirited as the lark
that mounts through the morning sky.'
'I should have thought it was very dreadful,' said Lady Rowley.
'Full of dread, of awe, and of horror, were those fiery days of
indiscriminate slaughter; but they were not days of desolation, because
hope was always there by our side. There was a hope in which the soul
could trust, and the trusting soul is ever light and buoyant.'
'I dare say it is,' said Lady Rowley.
'But apathy, and serfdom, and kinghood, and dominion, drain the
fountain of its living springs, and the soul becomes like the plummet
of lead, whose only tendency is to hide itself in subaqueous mud and
unsavoury slush.


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