hat's how I got both Ducie Street and Oniton. I said
to myself, 'I mean to be exactly here,' and I was, and Oniton's a place
in a thousand."

"But I do budge. Gentlemen seem to mesmerise houses--cow them with an
eye, and up they come, trembling. Ladies can't. It's the houses that are
mesmerising me. I've no control over the saucy things. Houses are alive.
No?"

"I'm out of my depth," he said, and added: "Didn't you talk rather like
that to your office boy?"

"Did I?--I mean I did, more or less. I talk the same way to every
one--or try to."

"Yes, I know. And how much of it do you suppose he understood?"

"That's his lookout. I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my
company. One can doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems
to do well enough, but it's no more like the real thing than money
is like food. There's no nourishment in it. You pass it to the lower
classes, and they pass it back to you, and this you call 'social
intercourse' or 'mutual endeavour,' when it's mutual priggishness if
it's anything. Our friends at Chelsea don't see this. They say one ought
to be at all costs intelligible, and sacrifice--"

"Lower classes," interrupted Mr. Wilcox, as it were thrusting his hand
into her speech. "Well, you do admit that there are rich and poor.
That's something."

Margaret could not reply. Was he incredibly stupid, or did he understand
her better than she understood herself?

"You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally, in a few years
there would be rich and poor again just the same. The hard-working man
would come to the top, the wastrel sink to the bottom."

"Every one admits that."

"Your Socialists don't."

"My Socialists do. Yours mayn't; but I strongly suspect yours of being
not Socialists, but ninepins, which you have constructed for your own
amusement. I can't imagine any living creature who would bowl over quite
so easily."

He would have resented this had she not been a woman. But women may say
anything--it was one of his holiest beliefs--and he only retorted, with
a gay smile: "I don't care. You've made two damaging admissions, and I'm
heartily with you in both."

In time they finished lunch, and Margaret, who had excused herself from
the Hippodrome, took her leave. Evie had scarcely addressed her, and she
suspected that the entertainment had been planned by the father. He
and she were advancing out of their respective families towards a more
intimate acquaintanc