ion, and she liked his moments of reserve and strong
self-control. They made his general expansiveness more distinguished.

Presently there was a pause, which she broke by saying,--

'I was at your lecture last Sunday--you didn't see me!'

'Were you? Ah! I remember a person in black, and veiled, who puzzled me.
I don't think we want you there, Madame de Netteville.'

His look was pleasant, but his tone had some decision in it.

'Why not? Is it only the artisans who have souls? A reformer should
refuse no one.'

'You have your own opportunities,' he said quietly; 'I think the men
prefer to have it to themselves for the present. Some of them are
dreadfully in earnest.'

'Oh, I don't pretend to be in earnest,' she said with a little wave of
her hand; 'or, at any rate, I know better than to talk of earnestness to
_you_.'

'Why to me?' he asked, smiling.

'Oh, because you and your like have your fixed ideas of the upper
class and the lower. One social type fills up your horizon. You are not
interested in any other.'

She looked at him defiantly. Everything about her to-night was splendid
and regal--her dress of black and white brocade, the diamonds at her
throat, the carriage of her head, nay, the marks of experience and
living on the dark subtle face.

'Perhaps not,' he replied; 'it is enough for one life to try and make
out where the English working class is tending to.'

'You are quite wrong, utterly wrong. The man who keeps his eye only on
the lower class will achieve nothing. What can the idealist do without
the men of action--the men who can take his beliefs and make them enter
by violence into existing institutions? And the men of action are to be
found with _us_.'

'It hardly looks just now as if the upper class was to go on enjoying a
monopoly of them,' he said, smiling.

'Then appearances are deceptive, The populace supplies mass and
weight--nothing else. What _you_ want is to touch the leaders, the men
and women whose voices carry, and then your populace would follow hard
enough, For instance'--and she dropped her aggressive tone and spoke
with a smiling kindness--'come down next Saturday to my little Surrey
cottage; you shall see some of these men and women there, and I will
make you confess when you go away that you have profited your workmen
more by deserting them than by staying with them. Will you come?'

'My Sundays are too precious to me just now, Madame de Netteville.
Besides, my firm co