ttered.... London seems to be so full of meanings--all mixed up
together."

She knitted her brows over her words and smiled appealingly at the end
as if for consideration for her inadequate expression, appealingly and
almost humorously.

I looked understandingly at her. "We have all," I agreed, "to come to
London."

"One sees so much distress," she added, as if she felt she had
completely omitted something, and needed a codicil.

"What are you doing in London?"

"I'm thinking of studying. Some social question. I thought perhaps I
might go and study social conditions as Mrs. Bailey did, go perhaps as
a work-girl or see the reality of living in, but Mrs. Bailey thought
perhaps it wasn't quite my work."

"Are you studying?"

"I'm going to a good many lectures, and perhaps I shall take up a
regular course at the Westminster School of Politics and Sociology. But
Mrs. Bailey doesn't seem to believe very much in that either."

Her faintly whimsical smile returned. "I seem rather indefinite," she
apologised, "but one does not want to get entangled in things one can't
do. One--one has so many advantages, one's life seems to be such a trust
and such a responsibility--"

She stopped.

"A man gets driven into work," I said.

"It must be splendid to be Mrs. Bailey," she replied with a glance of
envious admiration across the room.

"SHE has no doubts, anyhow," I remarked.

"She HAD," said Margaret with the pride of one who has received great
confidences.

6

"You've met before?" said Altiora, a day or so later.

I explained when.

"You find her interesting?"

I saw in a flash that Altiora meant to marry me to Margaret.

Her intention became much clearer as the year developed. Altiora was
systematic even in matters that evade system. I was to marry Margaret,
and freed from the need of making an income I was to come into
politics--as an exponent of Baileyism. She put it down with the other
excellent and advantageous things that should occupy her summer holiday.
It was her pride and glory to put things down and plan them out in
detail beforehand, and I'm not quite sure that she did not even mark
off the day upon which the engagement was to be declared. If she did,
I disappointed her. We didn't come to an engagement, in spite of the
broadest hints and the glaring obviousness of everything, that summer.

Every summer the Baileys went out of London to some house they hired
or borrowed, leaving their secret