dodge busses at Charing Cross corner all
day long, than raise flowers as big as cheeses, if they had their own
way. But they don't have their own way, and they must have something to
occupy themselves with--and they take to gardening. I daresay I'd even
do it myself if I had to live in the country, which thank God I don't!"

"That's because you don't know anything about the country," he told her,
but the retort, even while it justified itself, had a hollow sound in
his own ears. "All you know outside of London is Margate."

"I went to Yarmouth and Lowestoft this summer," she informed him,
crushingly.

Somehow he lacked the heart to laugh. "I know what you mean, Lou," he
said, with an affectionate attempt at placation. "I suppose there's a
good deal in what you say. It is dull, out there at my place, if you
have too much of it. Perhaps that's a good hint about my wife. It never
occurred to me, but it may be so. But the deuce of it is, what else is
there to do? We tried a house in London, during the Season----"

"Yes, I saw in the papers you were here," she said impassively, in
comment upon his embarrassed pause.

"I didn't look you up, because I didn't think you wanted much to see
me"--he explained with a certain awkwardness--"but bye-gones are all
bye-gones. We took a town house, but we didn't like it. It was one
endless procession of stupid and tiresome calls and dinners and parties;
we got awfully sick of it, and swore we wouldn't try it again. Well
there you are, don't you see? It's stupid in Hertfordshire, and it's
stupid here. Of course one can travel abroad, but that's no good
for more than a few months. Of course it would be different if I had
something to do. I tell you God's truth, Lou--sometimes I feel as if I
was really happier when I was a poor man. I know it's all rot--I really
wasn't--but sometimes it SEEMS as if I was."

She contemplated him with a leaden kind of gaze. "Didn't it ever occur
to you to do some good with your money?" she said, with slow bluntness.
Then, as if fearing a possible misconception, she added more rapidly: "I
don't mean among your own family. We're a clannish people, we Thorpes;
we'd always help our own flesh and blood, even if we kicked them while
we were doing it--but I mean outside, in the world at large."

"What have I got to do with the world at large? I didn't make it; I'm
not responsible for it." He muttered the phrases lightly enough, but a
certain fatuity in them se