She slopped along in the great galoshes, her back to the lighted house now, her face to the dark barns.  There they were, easily accessible, waiting for her.  Was she to take one, or was she not?  She did not give herself any excuse for taking it, or tell herself that one out of six was not much; or that Joost, could he know the case, would not have grudged her one of his precious bulbs.  There was only one thing she admitted—­it was there, and her need for it was great.  With it she could pay a debt that was due, show her father an honourable man, and, seeing that the affair could always remain secret, raise herself nearer to Rawson-Clew’s level.  Without it she could not.

She had come to the first barn now, and, unbarring the door, went in.  Almost oppressive came the dry smell of the bulbs to her; very familiar, too, as familiar as the distorted shadows that her lantern made.  Together they brought vividly to her mind the first time she went the rounds with Joost—­the night when she told him she was bad, the worst person he knew.  Poor Joost, he had interpreted her words his own way; she remembered very plainly what he said but two nights ago—­right and wrong, honourable and dishonourable, wise and unwise, they meant the same thing to different people, the choosing of the higher, the leaving of the lower—­and he believed no less of her.  That belief, surely, was a thing that fought on the side of the angels?  And then there was that other man, able, well-bred, intellectual, her superior, who had treated her as an equal, and so tacitly demanded that she should conform to his code of honour.  And there was Johnny Gillat, poor, old round-faced Johnny, who, under his silly, shabby exterior, had somewhere, quite understood, the same code, and standard of a gentleman, and never doubted but that she had it too—­surely these two, also, were on the side of the angels?

But it was not a matter of angels, neither was it a matter of this man’s thought, or that.  At bottom, it seemed all questions could be brought to plain terms—­What do I think?  I, alone in the big, black, contradictory world.  Julia realised it, and asked herself what it mattered if he, if they, if all the world called it wrong?  What—­pitiless, logical question—­was wrong?  Why should to take in one case be so called, and in another not?  By whose word, and by what law was a thing thus, and why was she to submit to it?

She faced the darkness, the lantern at her feet, her back against the shelves, and asked herself the world-old question; and, like many before her, found no answer, because logic, merciless solvent of faith and hope and law, never answers its own riddles.  Only, as she stood there, there rose up before her mind’s eye the face of Joost, with its simple gravity, its earnest, trusting blue eyes.  She saw it, and she saw the humble dignity with which he had shown her his six bulbs.  Not as a proud possessor shows a treasure, rather as an adept shares some secret