did it to the tune of Garryowen or Planxty Kelly. O for
a despot! The cry was for a beneficent despot, naturally: a large-minded
benevolent despot. In short, a despot to obey their bidding. Thoughtful young
people who think through the heart soon come to this conclusion. The heart is
the beneficent despot they would be. He cures those miseries; he creates the
novel harmony. He sees all difficulties through his own sanguine hues. He is the
musical poet of the problem, demanding merely to have it solved that he may
sing: clear proof of the necessity for solving it immediately.
    Thus far in their pursuit of methods for the government of a nation, to make
it happy, Diana was leader. Her fine ardour and resonance, and more than the
convincing ring of her voice, the girl's impassioned rapidity in rushing through
any perceptible avenue of the labyrinth, or beating down obstacles to form one,
and coming swiftly to some solution, constituted her the chief of the pair of
democratic rebels in questions that clamoured for instant solution. By dint of
reading solid writers, using the brains they possessed, it was revealed to them
gradually that their particular impatience came perhaps of the most earnest
desire to get to a comfortable termination of the inquiry: - the heart aching
for mankind sought a nest for itself. At this point Lady Dunstane took the lead.
Diana had to be tugged to follow. She could not accept a perhaps that cast
dubiousness on her disinterested championship. She protested a perfect certainty
of the single aim of her heart outward. But she reflected. She discovered that
her friend had gone ahead of her.
    The discovery was reached, and even acknowledged, before she could persuade
herself to swallow the repulsive truth. O self! self! self! are we eternally
masking in a domino that reveals your hideous old face when we could be most
positive we had escaped you? Eternally! the desolating answer knelled.
Nevertheless the poor, the starving, the overtaxed in labour, they have a right
to the cry of Now! now! They have; and if a cry could conduct us to the secret
of aiding, healing, feeding, elevating them, we might swell the cry. As it is,
we must lay it on our wits patiently to track and find the secret; and meantime
do what the individual with his poor pittance can. A miserable contribution!
sighed the girl. Old Self was perceived in the sigh. She was haunted.
    After all, one must live one's life. Placing her on a lower pedestal in her
self