nt to hear his
wife talk with the Dictator and to know that she was pleased, and to
believe that the Dictator was pleased with her. That, however, he
assumed as a matter of course--everybody must be pleased with that
woman.

After dinner the Dictator studied the so-called autobiography. It was a
marvellously well-ordered piece of composition as far as it went. It was
written in the neatest of manuscript, and had evidently been carefully
copied and re-copied so that the volume now in his hands was about as
good as any print. It was all chaptered and paged most carefully. It was
rich with capital pencil sketches and even with etchings. There was no
trace of any other hand but the one that he could find out in the whole
volume. He greatly admired the drawings and etchings.

'These are yours, of course?' he said, turning his eyes on Mrs.
Sarrasin.

'Oh, yes; I like to draw for this book. I hope it will have a success.
Do you think it will?' she asked wistfully.

'A success in what way, Mrs. Sarrasin? Do you mean a success in money?'

'Oh, no; we don't care about that. I suppose it will cost us some
money.'

'I fancy it will if you have all these illustrations, and of course you
will?'

'Yes, I want them to be in, because I think I can show what danger my
husband has been in better with my pencil than with my pen--I am a poor
writer.'

'Then the work is really all your own?'

'Oh, yes; _he_ has no time; I could not have him worried. It is my wish
altogether, and he yields to it--only to please me. He does not care in
the least for publicity--I do, for _him_.'

The Dictator began to be impressed, for the first time, by a recognition
of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a
great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There
was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and
the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be
to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism
could hardly find in the civilised world a more ready and defenceless
spoil. Suppose, then, that Sarrasin or his wife had either of them any
of the gift--if it be a gift and not a curse--which turns at once to the
ridiculous side of things, where would this devoted pair have been? Why,
of course they would have fallen out long ago. Mrs. Sarrasin would soon
have seen that her husband was a ridiculous old Don Quixote sort of
person, whom