lightest motion of the head towards the writing-room.

'I suppose so,' she said indifferently; 'she is East-Ending for a
change. We all do it nowadays. It is like Dizzy's young man who "liked
bad wine, he was so bored with good."'

Meanwhile, Madame de Netteville was leaning against the open window of
the fantastic little room, with Robert beside her.

'You look as if you had had a strain,' she said to him abruptly, after
they had talked business for a few minutes. 'What has been the matter?'

He told her Richards's story, very shortly. It would have been
impossible to him to give more than the driest outline of it in that
room. His companion listened gravely. She was an epicure in all things,
especially in moral sensation, and she liked his moments of reserve and
strong self-control. They made his general expansiveness more
distinguished.

Presently there was a pause, which she broke by saying--

'I was at your lecture last Sunday--you didn't see me!'

'Were you? Ah! I remember a person in black, and veiled, who puzzled me.
I don't think we want you there, Madame de Netteville.'

His look was pleasant, but his tone had some decision in it.

'Why not? Is it only the artisans who have souls? A reformer should
refuse no one.'

'You have your own opportunities,' he said quietly; 'I think the men
prefer to have it to themselves for the present. Some of them are
dreadfully in earnest.'

'Oh, I don't pretend to be in earnest,' she said with a little wave of
her hand; 'or, at any rate, I know better than to talk of earnestness to
_you_.'

'Why to me?' he asked, smiling.

'Oh, because you and your like have your fixed ideas of the upper class
and the lower. One social type fills up your horizon. You are not
interested in any other, and, indeed, you know nothing of any other.'

She looked at him defiantly. Everything about her to-night was splendid
and regal--her dress of black and white brocade, the diamonds at her
throat, the carriage of her head, nay, the marks of experience and
living on the dark subtle face.

'Perhaps not,' he replied: 'it is enough for one life to try and make
out where the English working class is tending to.'

'You are quite wrong, utterly wrong. The man who keeps his eye only on
the lower class will achieve nothing. What can the idealist do without
the men of action--the men who can take his beliefs and make them enter
by violence into existing institutions? And the men of action are