“Certainly our inventions are improving every decade,” he agreed, measuring his words. “And our scientific knowledge increases almost every year. But I am not at all sure that our kindness does, or our courage, or our sense of responsibility towards each other, and they are far truer marks of civilization.”

She looked at him with surprise and confusion in the shadows of her eyes.

“Unity believed we are far more enlightened than we used to be. We have thrown off the oppression of the past, the ignorance and the superstition. I heard her say so a number of times. And also that we are far more responsible for the care of the poor, less selfish and unjust than ever before.”

A flash of memory came to him from the schoolroom thirty years ago. “One of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt used to boast that in his reign no one was hungry or homeless.”

“Oh… I don’t think Unity knew that,” she said with surprise-and what could have been a flash of satisfaction.

Perhaps she was at last approaching the truths which mattered.

“How did your husband feel about her views, Mrs. Parmenter?”

Her face tightened again. She looked down, away from him. “He found them abhorrent. I cannot deny they quarreled rather often. If I do not tell you, then others will. It was impossible for the rest of us to be unaware of it.”

He could imagine it very easily: the expression of opinions around the meal table, the stiff silences, the innuendo, the laying down of law, and then the contradictions. There was little as fundamental to people as their beliefs in the order of things- not the metaphysics, but their own place in the universe, their value and purpose.

“And they quarreled this morning?” he prompted.

“Yes.” She looked at him with sadness and apprehension. “I don’t know what about precisely. My maid could probably tell you. She heard them as well, and so did my husband’s valet. I only heard the raised voices.” She looked as if she were about to add something, then changed her mind or could not find the words for it.