THE BETTER SORT
tions and the minor scale, even, of their early fears; compared notes on the fallibility of remedies and hopes, and, more and more united in the identity of their lesson, made out perfectly that, though there appeared to be many kinds of success, there was only one kind of failure. And yet what had been hardest had not been to have to shrink, but—the long game of bluff, as Straith called it—to have to keep up. It fairly swept them away at present, however, the hugeness of the relief of no longer keeping up as against each other. This gave them all the measure of the motive their courage, on either side, in silence and gloom, had forced into its service.
"Only what shall we do now for a motive?" Straith went on.
She thought. "A motive for courage?"
"Yes—to keep up."
"And go again, for instance, do you mean, to Mundham? We shall, thank heaven, never go again to Mundham. The Mundhams are over."
"Nous n'irons plus au bois;
Les lauriers sont coupés,"
sang Straith. "It does cost."
"As everything costs that one does for the rich. It's not our poor relations who make us pay."
"No; one must have means to acknowledge the others. We can't afford the opulent. But it isn't only the money they take."
"It's the imagination," said Mrs. Harvey. "As they have none themselves———"
"It's an article we have to supply? We have certainly to use a lot to protect ourselves," Straith agreed. "And the strange thing is that they like us."
She thought again. "That's what makes it easy to cut them. They forgive."
22
