rogressed this week under
your care?" he asked her lightly.

"It has not progressed," she answered; "there are enough mistakes in
it now to occupy Denah for a long time."

He took her basket from her, and she looked at him thoughtfully. He
was just the same as usual, quiet, drawling voice, eyeglass,
everything--she wondered if he were ever different; how he would act,
say, in her circumstances. If they could change bodies, now, and he be
Julia Polkington, with her relations, needs and opportunities, what
would he do? Would he still be impassive, deliberate, equal to all
occasions? Would he find it easy to keep his inviolable laws of
good-breeding and honour, and so forth?

"There is something I should like to ask you," she said suddenly.

"Yes?" he inquired.

"Is it much trouble to you to be honest?"

He was a little surprised, though not so much as he would have been
earlier in their acquaintance. "That," he said, "I expect rather
depends on what you mean by honest. I imagine you don't refer to lying
and stealing, and that sort of thing, since nobody finds it difficult
to avoid them."

"They are not gentlemanly?" she suggested.

"I don't know that I ever looked at it in that way," he said; "or,
indeed, any way. One does not think about those sort of things; one
does not do them, that's all."

She nodded. The careless change of pronoun, which in a way included
her with himself, was not lost upon her.

"In the matter of half-truths," she inquired; "how about them?"

"I don't think I have given that subject consideration either," he
answered, rather amused; "there does not seem any need at my age. One
does things, or one does not; abstractions don't appeal to most men
after thirty."

Again Julia nodded. "It looks to me," she said, "as if you take your
morality, like your dinner, as a matter of course; it's always there;
you don't have to bother after it; you don't really know how it comes,
or what it is worth."

Now and then Rawson-Clew had observed in his acquaintance with Julia,
she said things which had a way of lighting him up to himself; this
was one of the occasions. "Possibly you are right," he said, with
faint amusement. "How do you take yours? Let us consider yours; I am
sure it would be a great deal more interesting."

"There would be more variety in it," she said significantly.

"What is your opinion about half-truths?" he inquired, with grave
mimicry of her.

"'Half a truth, however