Part 27

One must be broad. One must be thorough. One must cover the whole field of thought.

Our little group this winter has been trying to do that. So far we've take up Bergson, socialism, psychology, Rabindranath Tagore, the meaning of welfare work, culinary science, the new movements in art -- and ever so many more things I can't re- member now.

For the rest of Lent we're going to take up the Cosmic Consciousness.

One of the girls thought it would be a nice sort of thing to take up during Lent -- a quiet kind of thing, you know; not like feminism or chemistry.

Have you seen any of the new parti-colored boots yet?

Isn't it an absurd idea?

And yet, you know -- if it made for Beauty!

That is what one must always say to one's self must one not? I mean: Does it make for Beauty?

That's the reason I left the Suffrage Party, you know. They wanted me to wear one of those hor- rid yellow sashes. And my complexion can't stand yellow. So I quit the Suffrage Party right there.

ISIS, THE ASTROLOGIST

WE'RE taking up astrology quiet seriously -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and we've hired the loveliest lady astrologer to cast our horoscopes and give us a talk and get us started right.

She wrote a letter to me--the most perfectly fascinating letter -- and I told her to call, and we looked her over. She wore a beautiful sky-blue gown with gold stars on it -- one of those Greek ones, you know, like poor, dear Isadora Duncan wore -- and a gold star in the middle of her forehead.

It makes her look like a unicorn, that star," Ravenswood Wimble said. But then nobody ever pleases Ravenswood Wimble completely. He is so -- if you get me.

"If a unicorn, then a celestial unicorn," Fothy Finch said. Fothy is too dear for anything; he is always hunting for the good in people, like Apollo, or Euripides -- which was it? -- when they gave him the basket full of wheat and chaff, and he separated them. Or maybe it was Diogenes.

She has six sisters, and they are all astrologers, and they call them the Pleiades.

Although Voke Easeley, in his horrid slangy way, said: "Pleiades? She's a Bear!"

Don't you just utterly loathe slang?

Bit I was going to tell you about the lovely letter she wrote -- that's what attracted me to her at the first.

"Have you never asked yourself," it began "'Why was I born?'"

Fancy knowing that about one! If there is one question I have asked myself thousands and thousands of times it is, "Why was I born?"

And then the letter went on to talk about horoscopes and the Inevitable.

"We may not overcome the inevitable," it said, "but it is ours to see that the Inevitable does not overcome us."

Oh, the Inevitable! The Inevitable!

How often I have thought of the Inevitable with despair!

And it has never occurred to me before that one could take it and use it as one pleased. But it seems one can if one knows about it beforehand. It is like Destiny that way. If one is ignorant of one's Destiny, it comes upon one with a surprise. But if one knows beforehand what one's Destiny is to be, one can make onself the master of it. That is where the horoscope comes in handy, you know.

After dipping into Astrology I will never again be afraid of the Inevitable.

As the Letter says: "Every woman with her horoscope before her, and her Soul back of her, should be able to solve any problem and meet any situation that may occur in her life."

Ravenswood Wimble wanted to know, when he met the lady -- did I tell you that her professional name is Isis? -- what would happen if her Soul was before her and her horoscope back of her. But Isis just simply froze him with a look.