ave to thank for the
closing of the theatre and the failure of Herdrine,--you who are
responsible for the fact that these women look at me with insolence
and the men as though I were a courtesan. How strange it must seem to
them to see us together--the wolf and the lamb! Well, never mind. Take
me somewhere and give me some tea; you owe me that, at least."

They turned and left the park. For a few minutes conversation was
impossible, but as soon as they had emerged from the crowd he
answered her.

"If I have ever helped any one to believe ill of you," he said slowly,
"I am only too happy that they should have the opportunity of seeing
us together. You are rather severe on me. I thought then, as I think
now, that it is--to put it mildly--impolitic to enter upon a
passionate denunciation of such an institution as marriage when any
substitute for it must necessarily be another step upon the downward
grade. The decadence of self-respect amongst young men, any contrast
between their lives and the lives of the women who are brought up to
be their wives, is too terribly painful a subject for us to discuss
here. Forgive me if I think now, as I have always thought, that it is
not a fitting subject for a novelist--certainly not for a woman. I may
be prejudiced; yet it was my duty to write as I thought. You must not
forget that! So far as your story went, I had nothing but praise for
it. There were many chapters which only an artist could have written."

She raised her eyebrows. They had turned into Bond Street now, and
were close to their destination.

"You men of letters are so odd," she exclaimed. "What is Art but
Truth? and if my book be not true, how can it know anything of art?
But never mind! We are talking shop, and I am a little tired of taking
life seriously. Here we are! Order me some tea, please, and a
chocolate _eclair_."

He followed her to a tiny round table, and sat down by her side upon
the cushioned seat. As he gave his order and looked around the little
room, he smiled gravely to himself. It was the first time in his
life,--at any rate since his boyhood,--that he had taken a woman into
a public room. Decidedly it was a new era for him.

CHAPTER VII

An incident, which Matravers had found once or twice uppermost in his
mind during the last few days, was recalled to him with sudden
vividness as he took his seat in an ill-lit, shabbily upholstered box
in the second tier of the New Theatre. He seemed