ommonplace. I no longer wondered
that Mrs. Strickland felt a certain embarrassment about him;
he was scarcely a credit to a woman who wanted to make herself
a position in the world of art and letters. It was obvious
that he had no social gifts, but these a man can do without;
he had no eccentricity even, to take him out of the common run;
he was just a good, dull, honest, plain man. One would
admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company.
He was null. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good
husband and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason
to waste one's time over him.

Chapter VII

The season was drawing to its dusty end, and everyone I knew
was arranging to go away. Mrs. Strickland was taking her
family to the coast of Norfolk, so that the children might
have the sea and her husband golf. We said good-bye to one
another, and arranged to meet in the autumn. But on my last
day in town, coming out of the Stores, I met her with her son
and daughter; like myself, she had been making her final
purchases before leaving London, and we were both hot and tired.
I proposed that we should all go and eat ices in the park.

I think Mrs. Strickland was glad to show me her children,
and she accepted my invitation with alacrity. They were even
more attractive than their photographs had suggested, and she was
right to be proud of them. I was young enough for them not to
feel shy, and they chattered merrily about one thing and another.
They were extraordinarily nice, healthy young children.
It was very agreeable under the trees.

When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolled
idly to my club. I was perhaps a little lonely, and it was
with a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant family
life of which I had had a glimpse. They seemed devoted to one
another. They had little private jokes of their own which,
unintelligible to the outsider, amused them enormously.
Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard that
demanded above all things verbal scintillation; but his
intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a
passport, not only to reasonable success, but still more to
happiness. Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and she
loved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward
adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those two
upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carry
on the normal traditions of thei