't,
where am I to find the time and money?'

'Give less time and money to hunting,' she could not repress.

But, over the sinking of her heart, she kept her voice light, and
Gerald, all unsuspecting, answered, as if it were a harmless jest they
were bandying, 'What a horrid score! But, yes, it's quite true; I want
my time for hunting and farming and studying a bit, and then you mustn't
forget that I enjoy dabbling at my painting in my spare moments and have
the company of my wise and charming Althea to cultivate. I've quite
enough to fill my time with.'

She was baffled, perplexed, and hurt. Her thoughts fixed with some irony
on his painting. Dabble at it indeed. Gerald had shown her some of his
sketches and they had hardly seemed to Althea to merit more than that
description. Her own tastes had grown up securely framed by books and
lectures. Her speciality was early Italian art. She liked pictures of
Madonnas surrounded by exquisite accessories--all of which she
accurately remembered. She didn't at all care for Japanese prints, and
Gerald's sketches looked to her rather like Japanese prints. She really
didn't imagine that he intended her to take them seriously, and when he
had brought them out and shown them to her she had said, 'Pretty, very
pretty indeed, dear; really you have talent, I'm sure of it. With hard
work, under a good master, you might have become quite a painter.' She
had then seen the little look of discomfiture on Gerald's face, though
he laughed good-humouredly as he put away his sketches, saying to Helen,
who was present, 'I'm put in my place, you see.'

Althea had hastened to add, 'But, dear, really I think them very pretty.
They show quite a direct, simple feeling for colour. Don't they, Helen?
Don't you feel with me that they are very pretty?'

Helen had said that she knew nothing about pictures, but liked Gerald's
very much.

It was hard now to be asked to accept this vagrant artistry instead of
the large, political life she had seen for him. And what of the London
drawing-room?

'You must keep in touch with people, Gerald,' she said. 'You mustn't
sink into the country squire for ever.'

'Oh, but that's just what I want to sink into,' said Gerald. 'Don't
bother about people, though, dear. We can have plenty of people to stay
with us, and go about a bit ourselves.'

'But we must be in London for part of the year,' said Althea.

'Oh, you will run up now and then for a week whenever you l