l that extra money upon his symbolic turret. He knows
a better secret, now, of how real individuality is gained. It consists
not in bricks and mortar nor in any latticed garden-work--though these
may be its outward signs--but in a being different. He hurries out and
buys the works of Chesterton and Bernard Shaw as a beginning.

Helena, of course, was predisposed to it since Devonshire.

She did not long to become different, so much: she hankered to cease
being ignorant.

Hubert was so clever, but that discouraged more than it helped her. He
talked quite brilliantly about such deep things, but he would not
explain. He laughed and said she was a jolly child. He always treated
her rather as one and certainly they had great fun together, but she
longed to be clever without getting old, and when she had told him so,
he simply laughed and said she ought to be content to have such quaint
ideas.

"It's far better," he added, "to be original than clever. Don't you
worry your dear little head with dull ideas and facts."

But Helena did worry.

She had now, apart from her old desire for self-development and
knowledge about life, all these dull lonely hours to fill; and as she
went about, slowly getting to know the people near, she found like our
enthusiast that every one of them was full of something--some vital,
all-absorbing topic, if nothing more than golf or their own handicap.
And that, she saw at once, was what she had to have if she wished ever
to make her life really full. She could not go to matinees, like some,
or Hubert missed her all the afternoon; and if they went to an At Home,
he always dashed away at five, which looked so rude, and people--she
felt sure--said afterwards that she could not have much hold over him,
so soon. She tried novels, but these she really could not understand.
Hubert watched cynically her attempts to get at grips with a sex-novel
more sexual than is expected even in these days of censorships and free
advertisement.

"But, Hubert," she said finally, "why did she do that? Wasn't she fond
of her husband? He seems quite nice. Do these terrible things really
happen?"

"Oh no," he answered, as one would speak to a child. "Of course they
never happen really."

Helena looked puzzled. "Then why do people write or read them?" she
asked.

"My dear girl," he answered in the heavy-father manner that gave him
such pleasure, "if you could answer that, you would have solved one of