s hand, at which he was looking as if he
expected to go on immediately with what he was in the middle of saying
to Mary Datchet. The apparition of an unknown lady in full evening dress
seemed to disturb him. He took his pipe from his mouth, rose stiffly,
and sat down again with a jerk.

"Have you been dining out?" Mary asked.

"Are you working?" Katharine inquired simultaneously.

The young man shook his head, as if he disowned his share in the
question with some irritation.

"Well, not exactly," Mary replied. "Mr. Basnett had brought some papers
to show me. We were going through them, but we'd almost done.... Tell us
about your party."

Mary had a ruffled appearance, as if she had been running her fingers
through her hair in the course of her conversation; she was dressed more
or less like a Russian peasant girl. She sat down again in a chair which
looked as if it had been her seat for some hours; the saucer which stood
upon the arm contained the ashes of many cigarettes. Mr. Basnett, a very
young man with a fresh complexion and a high forehead from which the
hair was combed straight back, was one of that group of "very able young
men" suspected by Mr. Clacton, justly as it turned out, of an influence
upon Mary Datchet. He had come down from one of the Universities not
long ago, and was now charged with the reformation of society. In
connection with the rest of the group of very able young men he had
drawn up a scheme for the education of labor, for the amalgamation of
the middle class and the working class, and for a joint assault of the
two bodies, combined in the Society for the Education of Democracy,
upon Capital. The scheme had already reached the stage in which it was
permissible to hire an office and engage a secretary, and he had been
deputed to expound the scheme to Mary, and make her an offer of the
Secretaryship, to which, as a matter of principle, a small salary was
attached. Since seven o'clock that evening he had been reading out loud
the document in which the faith of the new reformers was expounded, but
the reading was so frequently interrupted by discussion, and it was so
often necessary to inform Mary "in strictest confidence" of the private
characters and evil designs of certain individuals and societies that
they were still only half-way through the manuscript. Neither of
them realized that the talk had already lasted three hours. In their
absorption they had forgotten even to feed the fire, a