his finely drawn face, which had a
kind of surface-sensitiveness akin to the surface-refinement of its
setting.

"Is it that you no longer believe in our ideas?" he asked.

"In our ideas--?"

"The ideas I am trying to teach. The ideas you and I are supposed to
stand for." He paused a moment. "The ideas on which our marriage was
founded."

The blood rushed to her face. He had his reasons, then--she was sure
now that he had his reasons! In the ten years of their marriage, how
often had either of them stopped to consider the ideas on which it was
founded? How often does a man dig about the basement of his house to
examine its foundation? The foundation is there, of course--the house
rests on it--but one lives abovestairs and not in the cellar. It was
she, indeed, who in the beginning had insisted on reviewing the
situation now and then, on recapitulating the reasons which justified
her course, on proclaiming, from time to time, her adherence to the
religion of personal independence; but she had long ceased to feel the
need of any such ideal standards, and had accepted her marriage as
frankly and naturally as though it had been based on the primitive
needs of the heart, and needed no special sanction to explain or
justify it.

"Of course I still believe in our ideas!" she exclaimed.

"Then I repeat that I don't understand. It was a part of your theory
that the greatest possible publicity should be given to our view of
marriage. Have you changed your mind in that respect?"

She hesitated. "It depends on circumstances--on the public one is
addressing. The set of people that the Van Siderens get about them
don't care for the truth or falseness of a doctrine. They are attracted
simply by its novelty."

"And yet it was in just such a set of people that you and I met, and
learned the truth from each other."

"That was different."

"I thought you considered it one of the deepest social wrongs that such
things never _are_ discussed before young girls; but that is beside the
point, for I don't remember seeing any young girl in my audience
to-day--"

"Except Una Van Sideren!"

He turned slightly and pushed back the lamp at his elbow.

"Oh, Miss Van Sideren--naturally--"

"Why naturally?"

"The daughter of the house--would you have had her sent out with her
governess?"

"If I had a daughter I should not allow such things to go on in my
house!"

Westall, stroking his mustache, leaned back with a faint smile. "I