Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/221

 of the mildest purgatory as suitable to those poor flippertygibbet inanities who broke the seventh commandment as gaily as a child breaks his indiarubber ball, and were as incapable of passion and crime as they were incapable of heroism and virtue?

There might be paradise for virtue, and hell for crime, but what in the name of the universe was to be done with creatures that were only all Folly? Perhaps they would be always flying about like the souls Virgil speaks of, "suspense ad ventos," to purify themselves; as the sails of a ship spread out to dry. The Huron Indians pray to the souls of the fish they catch; well, why should they not? a fish has a soul if Modern Society has one; one could conceive a fish going softly through shining waters forever and forever in the ecstacy of motion; but who could conceive Modern Society in the spheres?

Wandering thus from her drawing-room furniture to problems of eternity, and only succeeding in making herself unsettled and uncomfortable, the Lady Hilda, out of tune with everything, put off her cashmere dressing-gown, had herself