asked, with a little smile.

"That depends upon many things," said Mary. The conspirators looked
pleased, as if Katharine's question, with the belief in their existence
which it implied, had a warming effect upon them.

"In starting a society such as we wish to start (we can't say any more
at present)," Mr. Basnett began, with a little jerk of his head, "there
are two things to remember--the Press and the public. Other societies,
which shall be nameless, have gone under because they've appealed only
to cranks. If you don't want a mutual admiration society, which dies as
soon as you've all discovered each other's faults, you must nobble the
Press. You must appeal to the public."

"That's the difficulty," said Mary thoughtfully.

"That's where she comes in," said Mr. Basnett, jerking his head in
Mary's direction. "She's the only one of us who's a capitalist. She can
make a whole-time job of it. I'm tied to an office; I can only give my
spare time. Are you, by any chance, on the look-out for a job?" he asked
Katharine, with a queer mixture of distrust and deference.

"Marriage is her job at present," Mary replied for her.

"Oh, I see," said Mr. Basnett. He made allowances for that; he and
his friends had faced the question of sex, along with all others, and
assigned it an honorable place in their scheme of life. Katharine felt
this beneath the roughness of his manner; and a world entrusted to the
guardianship of Mary Datchet and Mr. Basnett seemed to her a good world,
although not a romantic or beautiful place or, to put it figuratively,
a place where any line of blue mist softly linked tree to tree upon the
horizon. For a moment she thought she saw in his face, bent now over the
fire, the features of that original man whom we still recall every
now and then, although we know only the clerk, barrister, Governmental
official, or workingman variety of him. Not that Mr. Basnett, giving his
days to commerce and his spare time to social reform, would long carry
about him any trace of his possibilities of completeness; but, for the
moment, in his youth and ardor, still speculative, still uncramped, one
might imagine him the citizen of a nobler state than ours. Katharine
turned over her small stock of information, and wondered what their
society might be going to attempt. Then she remembered that she was
hindering their business, and rose, still thinking of this society, and
thus thinking, she said to Mr. Basnett:

"Well,