till more oases in the desert,' she said
idly, 'if there were a new law made----'

He glanced at her with veiled apprehension in the pause.

'You being so Liberal,' she went on with faint mockery, 'you're the very
one to introduce the measure' (he shrank visibly, and seemed about to
remind her of her pledge). 'It shall ordain,' she went on, 'that those
who have found satisfactory husbands or wives are to rest content with
their good fortune, and not be so greedy as to insist on having the
children, too.'

'Oh!' His gravity relaxed.

'But, on the other hand, all the lonely women, the widows and spinsters,
who haven't got anything else, _they_ shall have the children.'

'I won't go so far as that,' he laughed, boundlessly relieved that the
conversation was not taking the strenuous turn he for a moment feared.
'But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll support a measure that shall make
an allowance of _one_ child to every single woman the proper and
accepted arrangement. No questions asked, and no disgrace.'

'Disgrace!' she echoed, smiling. 'On the contrary, it should be the
woman's title to honour! She should be given a beautiful Order like
yours for service to the State.'

'Ah, yes! But, what then would we talk about?'

She had turned away definitely this time.

'Well,' said Borrodaile, a little mocking, 'what is it?'

'I don't know,' she answered. 'I don't know _what_ it is that seizes
hold of me after I've been chattering like this for an hour or more.'

Borrodaile bent his head, and glanced past Vida to the abandoned
minister.

'Console me by saying a slight weariness.'

'More like loathing.'

'Not of _both_ your neighbours, I hope.'

He lost the low 'Of myself.' 'But there's one person,' she said, with
something like enthusiasm--'one person that I respect and admire.'

'Oh!' He glanced about the board with an air of lazy interest. 'Which
one?'

'I don't know her name. I mean the woman who dares to sit quite silent
and eat her dinner without looking like a lost soul.'

'I've been saying you could do that.'

She shook her head. 'No, I've been engaged for the last hour in proving
I haven't the courage. It's just come over me,' she said, her eyes in
their turn making a tour of the table, and coming back to Borrodaile
with the look of having caught up a bran-new topic on the way--'it's
just come over me, what we're all doing.'

'Are we all doing the same thing?'

'All the men are doing one thing. An