They were great believers in the Empire, they on the "Novum." Indeed, they were the only true Imperialists, since they recognized that ideas, and not actions, were by far and away the most potent instruments in the betterment of mankind. Everybody who was anybody knew that, a mere sporadic outbreak here and there (such as the one in Manchuria) notwithstanding, war had been virtually impossible ever since the publication of M. Bloch's book declaring it to be so. What, they asked, was war, more than an unfortunate miscalculation on the part of the lamb that happened to lie down with the lion? And what made the miscalculation so unfortunate? Why, surely the possession by the lion of teeth and claws. Draw his teeth and cut his claws, and the two would slumber peacefully together. So with the British lion. He only fought because he had things ready to fight with. Philosophically, his aggressions were not much more than a kind of sportive manifestation of the joy of life, that happened, rather inconsequentially, to take the form of the joy of death. Take away the ships and guns, then, and everything would be all right.

These views on the Real Empire were in no way incompatible with Mr. Wilkinson's desire to see all Trade Unionists armed. For a war at home, about shorter hours and higher wages, would at any rate be a war between equals in race. It was wars between unequals that had made of the Old Empire so hideous a thing. Amory herself had more than once stated this rather well.

"I call it cowardice," she had said. "Every fine instinct in us tells us to stick up for the weaker side. It makes my blood boil! Think of those gentle and dusky millions, all being, to put it in a word, bullied—just bullied! We all know the kind of man who goes abroad—the conventional 'adventurer' (I like 'adventurer!') He's just a common bully. He drinks disgustingly, and swears, and kicks people who don't get out of his way—but he's always careful to have a revolver in his pocket for fear they should hit him back!... And he makes a tremendous fuss about his white women, but when it comes to their black or brown ones ... well, anyway, I think he's a brute, and we want a better class of man than that for our readers!"

And that was briefly why, at the "Novum," they tried to reduce armaments at home, and gave at least moral encouragement to the other side whenever there was a dust-up abroad.

But it had been some time ago that Amory had said all this, and her attitude since then had undergone certain changes. One of these changes had been her acquisition of the Romantic Point of View; another had been that suspended state of affairs between herself and Mr. Strong. The first of these curtailed a good deal of the philosophy in which Mr. Strong always seemed anxious to enwrap the subject (in order, as far as Amory could see, to avoid action). It also made a little more of the position of women, white, black or brown, and especially when rolled up in carpets, in Imperial affairs. And the second, that hung-up relation between Edgar Strong and herself, had left her constantly wondering what would have happened had she taken Mr. Strong at his word and fled to Paris with him, and exactly where they stood since she had not done so.

For naturally, things could hardly have been expected to be the same after that. Since Edgar had ceased to come quite so frequently to The Witan, Amory had thought the whole situation carefully over and had come to her conclusion. Perhaps the histories of les grandes maitresses and the writings of Key had helped her; or, more likely, Key in Sweden (or wherever it was) and herself in England had arrived at the same conclusion by independent paths. That conclusion, stated in three words, was the Genius of Love.

It was perfectly simple. Why had Amory Towers, the painter of that picture ("Barrage") so enthusiastically acclaimed by the whole of Feminist England, now for so long ceased to paint? What had become of the Genius that had brought that picture into being? It is certain that Genius cannot be stifled. Deny it one opportunity and it will break out somewhere else—in another art, in politics, in leadership in one form or another, or it may be even in crime.

Even so, Amory was conscious, her own Genius had refused to be suppressed. It had found another outlet in politics, directed in a recumbent attitude from a sofa.

Yet that had landed her straightway in a dilemma—the dilemma of Edgar and the twins, of Paris on seven francs a day and the comforts Cosimo allowed her, of a deed that was to have put even that of the Wyrons into the shade and a mere settling down to the prospect of seeing Edgar when it pleased him to put in an appearance.

She had not seen this protean property of Genius just at first. That could only have been because she had not examined herself sufficiently. She had been introspective, but not introspective enough.

And lest she should be mistaken in the mighty changes that were going on within herself, at first she had tried the painting again. Her tubes were dry and her brushes hard, but she had got new ones, and one after another she had taken up her old half-finished canvases again. A single glance at them had filled her with astonishment at the leagues of progress, mental and emotional, that she had made since then. She had laughed almost insultingly at those former attempts. That large canvas on the "Triumph of Humane Government" was positively frigid! And Edgar had liked it!... Well, that only showed what a power she now had over Edgar if she only cared to use it. If he had liked that chilly piece of classicism, he would stand dumb before the canvas that every faculty in her was now straining to paint. She began to think that canvas out....

It must be Eastern, of course; nay, it must be The East—tremendously voluptuous and so on. She would paint it over the "Triumph." It should be bathed in a sunrise, rabidly yellow (they had no time for decaying mellowness in those vast and kindling lands to which Amory's inner eye was turned)—and of course there ought to be a many-breasted what-was-her-name in it, the goddess (rather rank, perhaps, but that was the idea, a smack at effete occidental politeness). And there ought to be a two-breasted figure as well, perhaps with a cord or something in her hand, hauling up the curtain of night, or at any rate showing in some way or other that her superb beauty was actually responsible for the yellow sunrise....

And above all, she must get herself into it—the whole of herself—all that tremendous continent that Cosimo had not had, that her children had not had, that her former painting had left unexpressed, that politics had not brought out of her....

The result of that experiment was remarkable. Two days later she had thrown the painting aside again. It was a ghastly failure. But only for a moment did that depress her; the next moment she had seen further. She was a Genius; she knew it—felt it; she was so sure about it that she would never have dreamed of arguing about it; she had such thoughts sometimes.... And Genius could never be suppressed. Very well; the Eastern canvas was a total failure; she admitted it. Ergo, her Genius was for something else than painting.

That was all she had wanted to know.

For what, then? No doubt Edgar Strong, who had enlightened her about herself before, would be able to enlighten her again now. And if he would not come to see her, she must go and see him. But already she saw the answer shining brightly ahead. She must pant, not paint; live, not limn. Her Genius was, after all, for Love.

True, at the thought of those offices in Charing Cross Road she had an instinctive shrinking. Their shabbiness rather took the shine out of the voluptuousnesses she had tried, and failed, to get upon her canvas. But perhaps there was a fitness in that too. Genius, whether in Art or in Love, is usually poor. If she could be splendid there she could be so anywhere. No doubt heaps and heaps of grand passions had transfigured grimy garrets, and had made of them perfectly ripping backgrounds....

So on an afternoon in mid-January Amory put on her new velvet costume of glaucous sea-holly blue and her new mushroom-white hat, and went down to the "Novum's" offices in a taxi. It seemed to her that she got there horribly quickly. Her heart was beating rapidly, and already she had partly persuaded herself that if Edgar wasn't in it might perhaps be just as well, as she had half-promised the twins to have tea with them in the nursery soon, and anyway she could come again next week. Or she might leave Edgar a note to come up to The Witan. There were familiar and supporting influences at The Witan. But here she felt dreadfully defenceless.... She reached her destination. Slowly she passed through the basement-room with the sandwich-boards, ascended the dark stairs, and walked along the upper corridor that was hung with the specimens of poster-art.

Edgar was in. He was sitting at his roll-top desk, with his feet thrust into the unimaginable litter of papers that covered it. He appeared to be dozing over the "Times," and had not drunk the cup of tea that stood at his elbow with a sodden biscuit and a couple of lumps of sugar awash in the saucer.—Without turning his head he said "Hallo," almost as if he expected somebody else. "Did you bring me some cigarettes in?" he added, still not turning. And this was a relief to Amory's thumping heart. She could begin with a little joke.

"No," she said. "I didn't know you wanted any."

There was no counterfeit about the start Mr. Strong gave. So swiftly did he pluck his feet away from the desk that twenty sheets of paper planed down to the floor, bringing the cup of tea with them in their fall.

But Mr. Strong paid no attention to the breakage and mess. He was on his feet, looking at Amory. He looked, but he had never a word to say. And she stood looking at him—charming in her glaucous blue, the glint of rich red that peeped from under the new white hat, and her slightly frightened smile.

"Haven't you any?" she said archly.

At that Mr. Strong found his tongue.

"Excuse me just a moment," he muttered, striding past her and picking up something from his desk as he went. "Sit down, won't you?" Then he opened the door by which Amory had entered, did something behind it, and returned, closing the door again. "Only so that we shan't be disturbed," he said. "They go into the other office when they see the notice.—I wasn't expecting you."

Nor did he, Amory thought, show any great joy at her appearance. On the contrary, he had fixed a look very like a glare on her. Then he walked to the hearth. A big fire burned there behind a wire guard, and within the iron kerb stood the kettle he had boiled to make tea. He put his elbows on the mantelpiece and turned his back to her. Again it was Mr. Brimby's sorrowing Oxford attitude. Amory had moved towards his swivel chair and had sat down. Her heart beat a little agitatedly. He remembered!...

He spoke without any beating about the bush.—"Ought you to have done this?" he said over his shoulder.

She fiddled with her gloves.—"To have done what?" she asked nervously.

"To have come here," came in muffled tones back. It was evident that he was having to hold himself in.

Then suddenly he wheeled round. This time there was no doubt about it—it was a glare, and a resolute one.

But he had not been able to think of any new line. It was the one he had used before. He made it a little more menacing, that was all.

"I'm only flesh and blood—," he said quickly, his hands ever so slightly clenching and unclenching and his throat apparently swallowing something.

Her heart was beating quickly enough now.—"But—but—," she stammered,—"if you only mean my coming here—I've been here lots of times before——"

He wasted few words on that.

"Not since——," he rapped out. He was surveying her sternly now.

"But—but—," she faltered again, "—it's only me, Edgar—I am connected with the paper, you know—that is to say my husband is——"

"That's true," he groaned.

"And—and—I should have come before—I've been intending to come—but I've been so busy——"

But that also he brushed aside for the little it was worth. "Must you compromise yourself like this?" he demanded. "Don't you see? I'm not made of wood, and I suppose your eyes are open too. Prang may be here at any moment. He'll see that notice on the door, and wait ... and then he'll see you go out. You oughtn't to have come," he continued gloomily. "Why did you, Amory?"

Once more she quailed before the blue mica of his eye. Her words came now a bit at a time. The victory was his.

"Only to—to see—how the paper was going on—and to—to talk things over—," she said.

"Oh!" He nodded. "Very well."

He strode forward from the mantelpiece and approached the desk at which she sat.

"I suppose Cosimo wants to know; very well. As a matter of fact I'm rather glad you've come. Look here——"

He grabbed a newspaper from the desk and thrust it almost roughly into her hands.

"Read that," he said, stabbing the paper with his finger.

The part in which he stabbed it was so unbrokenly set that it must have struck Katie Deedes as overwhelmingly learned.—"There you are—read that!" he ordered her.

Then, striding back to the mantelpiece, he stood watching her as if he had paid for a seat in a playhouse and had found standing-room only.

Amory supposed that it must be something in that close and grey-looking oblong that was at the bottom of his imperious curtness. She was sure of this when, before she had read half a dozen lines, he cut in with a sharp "Well? I suppose you see what it means to us?"

"Just a moment," she said bewilderedly; "you always did read quicker than I can——"

"Quicker!—" he said. "Just run your eye down it. That ought to tell you."

She did so, and a few capitals caught her eye.

"Do you mean this about the North-West Banks?" she asked diffidently.

"Do I mean——! Well, yes. Rather."

"I do wish you'd explain it to me. It seems rather hard."

But he did not approach and point out particular passages. Instead he seemed to know that leaden oblong by heart. He gave a short laugh.

"Hard? It's hard enough on the depositors out there!... They've been withdrawing again, and of course the Banks have had to realize."

"Yes, I saw that bit," said Amory.

"A forced realization," Mr. Strong continued. "Depreciation in values, of course. And it's spreading."

It sounded to Amory rather like smallpox, but, "I suppose that's the Monsoon?" she hazarded.

"Partly, of course. Not altogether. There's the rupee too, of course. At present that's at about one and twopence, but then there are these bi-metallists.... So until we know what's going to happen, it seems to me we're bound hand and foot."

Amory was awed.—"What—what do you think will happen?" she asked.

Edgar gave a shrug.—"Well—when a Bank begins paying out in pennies it's as well to prepare for the worst, you know."

"Are—are they doing that?" Amory asked in a whisper. "Really? And is that the bi-metallists' doing—or is it the Home Government? Do explain it to me so that I can visualize it. You know I always understand things better when I can visualize them. That's because I'm an artist.—Does it mean that there are long strings of natives, with baskets and things on their heads to put the pennies in, all waiting at the Banks, like people in the theatre-queues?"

"I dare say. I suppose they have to carry the pennies somehow. But I'm afraid I can't tell you more than's in the papers."

Amory's face assumed an expression of contempt. On the papers she was quite pat.

"The papers! And how much of the truth can we get from the capitalist press, I should like to know! Why, it's a commonplace among us—one is almost ashamed to say it again—that the 'Times' is always wrong! We have no Imperialist papers really; only Jingo ones. Is there no way of finding out what this—crisis—is really about?"

This was quite an easy one for Mr. Strong. Many times in the past, when pressed thus by his proprietor's wife for small, but exact, details, he had wished that he had known even as much about them as seemed to be known by that smart young man who had once come to The Witan in a morning coat and had told Edgar Strong that he didn't know what he was talking about. But he had long since found a way out of these trifling difficulties. Lift the issue high enough, and it is true of most things that one man's opinion is as good as another's; and they lifted issues quite toweringly high on the "Novum." Therefore in self-defence Mr. Strong flapped (so to speak) his wings, gave a struggle, cleared the earth, and was away in the empyrean of the New Imperialism.

"The 'Times' always wrong. Yes. We've got to stick firmly to that," he said. "But don't you see, that very fact makes it in its way quite a useful guide. It's the next best thing to being always right, like us; we can depend on its being wrong. We've only got to contradict it, and then ask ourselves why we do so. There's usually a reason.... So there is in this—er—crisis. Of course you know their argument—that a lot of these young native doctors and lawyers come over here, and stop long enough to pick up the latest wrinkles in swindling—the civilized improvements so to speak—and then go back and start these wildcat schemes, Banks and so on, and there's a smash. I think that's a fair statement of their case.—But what's ours? Why, simply that what they're really doing is to give the Home Government a perfectly beautiful opportunity of living up to its own humane professions.... But we know what that means," he added sadly.

"You mean that it just shows," said Amory eagerly, "that we aren't humane at all really? In fact, that England's a humbug?"

Mr. Strong smiled. He too, in a sense, was paying out in pennies, and so far quite satisfactorily.

"Well ... take this very crisis," he returned. "Oughtn't there to be a grant, without a moment's loss of time, from the Imperial Exchequer? I'm speaking from quite the lowest point of view—the mere point of view of expediency if you like. Very well. Suppose one or two natives are scoundrels: what about it? Are matters any better because we know that? Don't the poverty and distress exist just the same? And isn't that precisely our opportunity, if only we had a statesman capable of seeing it?... Look here: We've only got to go to them and say, 'We are full of pity and help; here are a lot of—er—lakhs; lakhs of rupees; rupee one and twopence: you may have been foolish, but it isn't for us to cast the first stone; it's the conditions that are wrong; go and get something to eat, and don't forget your real friends by and by.'—Isn't that just the way to bind them to us? By their gratitude, eh? Isn't getting their gratitude better than blowing them from the muzzles of guns, eh? And isn't that the real Empire, of which we all dream? Eh?..."

He warmed up to it, while keeping one ear open for anybody who might come along the passage; and when he found himself running down he grabbed the newspaper again. He doubled it back, refolded it, and again thrust it under Amory's nose.... There! That put it all in a nutshell, he said! The figures spoke for themselves. The Home Government, he said, knew all about it all the time, but of course they came from that hopeless slough of ineptitude that humorists were pleased to call the "governing classes," and that was why they dragged such red herrings across the path of true progress as—well, as the Suffrage, say.... What! Hadn't Amory heard that all this agitation for the Suffrage was secretly fomented by the Government itself? Oh, come, she must know that! Why, of course it was! The Government knew dashed well what they were doing, too! It was a moral certainty that there was somebody behind the scenes actually planning half these outrages! Why? Why, simply because it got 'em popular sympathy when a Minister had his windows smashed or a paper of pepper thrown in his face. They were only too glad to have pepper thrown in their faces, because everybody said what a shame it was, and forgot all about what fools they'd been making of themselves, and when a real—er—crisis came, like this one, people scarcely noticed it.... But potty little intellects like Brimby's and Wilkinson's didn't see as deep as that. It was only Edgar Strong and Amory who saw as deep as that. That was why they, Edgar and Amory, were where they were—leaders of thought, not subordinates....

"Just look rather carefully at those figures," he concluded....

Nevertheless, lofty as these flights were, they had a little lost their thrill for Amory. She had heard them so very, very often. She had trembled in the taxi in vain if this was all that her stealthy coming to the "Novum's" offices meant. Nor had she put on her new sea-holly velvet to be told, however eloquently, that Wilkinson and Brimby were minor lights when compared with Edgar and herself, and that the "Times" was always wrong. Perhaps the figures that Edgar had thrust under her nose as if he had been clapping a muzzle on her meant something to the right person, but they meant nothing to Amory, and she didn't pretend they did. They were man's business; woman's was "visualizing." The two businesses, when you came to think of it, were separate and distinct. Whoever heard of a man wrapping himself up in a carpet and being carried by Nubians into his mistress's presence? Whoever heard of a man's face launching as much as an up-river punt, let alone fleets and fleets of full-sized ships? And whoever heard of the compelling beauty of a man's eyes, as he lay on a sofa with one satiny upper-arm upraised, simply making—making—a woman come and kiss him?... It was ridiculous. Amory saw now. Even Joan of Arc must have put on her armour, not so much because of all the chopping and banging of maces and things (which must have been very noisy), but more with the idea of inspiring.... Yes, inspiring: that was it. There was a difference. Why, even physically women and men were not the same, and mentally they were just as different. For example, Amory herself wouldn't have liked to blow anybody from the mouth of a gun, but she wasn't sure sometimes that Edgar wouldn't positively enjoy it. He had that hard eye, and square head, and capacity for figures....

She wasn't sure that her heart didn't go out to him all the more because of that puzzle of noughts and dots and rupees he had thrust into her hands....

And so, as he continued (so to speak) to gain time by paying in pennies, and to keep an ear disengaged for the passage, it came about that Edgar Strong actually overshot himself. The more technical and masculine he became, the more Amory felt that it was fitting and feminine in her not to bother with these things at all, but just to go on inspiring. She still kept her eyes bent over the column of figures, but she was visualizing again. She was visualizing the Channel steamer, and the Latin Quarter, and satiny upper-arms. And the taxi-tremor had returned....

Suddenly she looked softly yet daringly up. She felt that she must be Indian—yet not too Indian.

"And then there's suttee," she said in a low voice.

"Eh?" said Strong. He seemed to scent danger. "Abolished," he said shortly.

But here Amory was actually able to tell Edgar Strong something. She happened to have been reading about suttee in a feminist paper only a day or two before. No doubt Edgar read nothing but figures and grey oblongs.

"Oh, no," she said softly but with a knowledge of her ground. "That is, I know it's prohibited, but there was a case only a little while ago. I read it in the 'Vaward.' And it was awful, but splendid, too. She was a young widow, and I'm sure she had a lovely face, because she'd such a noble soul.—Don't you think they often go together?"

But Edgar did not reply. He had walked to a little shelf full of reference books and books for review, and was turning over pages.

"And the whole village was there," Amory continued, "and she walked to the pyre herself, and said good-bye to all her relatives, and then——"

Edgar shut his book with a slap.—"Abolished in 1829," he said. "It's a criminal offence under the Code."

Amory smiled tenderly. Abolished!... Dear, fellow, to think that in such matters he should imagine that his offences and Codes could make any difference! Of course the "Vaward" had made a mere Suffrage argument out of the thing, but to Amory it had just showed how cruel and magnificent and voluptuous and grim the East could be when it really tried.... And then all at once Amory thought, not of any particular poem she had ever read, but what a ripping thing it would be to be able to write poetry, and to say all those things that would have been rather silly in prose, and to put heaps of gorgeous images in, like the many-breasted what-was-her-name, and Thingummy—what-did-they-call-him—the god with all those arms. And there would be carpets and things too, and limbs, not plaster ones, but flesh and blood ones, as Edgar said his own were, and—and—and oh, stacks of material! The rhymes might be a bit hard, of course, and perhaps after all it might be better to leave poetry to somebody else, and to concentrate all her energies on inspiring, as Beatrice inspired Dante, and Laura Petrarch, and that other woman Camoens, and Jenny Rossetti, and Vittoria Colonna Michael Angelo. She might even inspire Edgar to write poetry. And she would be careful to keep the verses out of Cosimo's way....

"Abolished!" she smiled in gay yet mournful mockery, and also with a touch both of reproach and of disdain in her look.... "Oh well, I suppose men think so...."

But at this he rounded just as suddenly on her as he had done when he had told her that she ought not to have come to the office. Perhaps he felt that he was losing ground again. You may be sure that Edgar Strong, actor, had never had to work as hard for his money as he had to work that afternoon.

"Amory!" he called imperiously. "I tell you it won't do—not at this juncture! I'd just begun to find a kind of drug in my work; I've locked myself up here; and now you come and undo it all again with a look! I see we must have this out. Let me think."

He began to pace the floor.

When he did speak again, his phrases came in detached jerks. He kept looking sharply up and then digging his chin into his red tie again.

"It was different before," he said. "It might have been all right before. We were free then—in a way. It was different in every way.... (Mind your dress in that tea).... But we can't do anything now. Not at present. There's this crisis. That's suddenly sprung upon us. There's got to be somebody at the wheel—the 'Novum's' wheel, I mean. I hate talking about my duty, but you've read the 'Times' there. The 'Times' is always wrong, and if we desert our posts the whole game's up—U.P. Prang's no good here. Prang can't be trusted at a pinch. And Wilkinson's no better. Neither of 'em any good in an emergency. Weak man at bottom, Wilkinson—the weakness of violence—effeminate, like these strong-word poets. We can't rely on Wilkinson and Prang. And who is there left? Eh?"

But he did not wait for an answer.

"Starving thousands, and no Imperial Grant." His voice grew passionate. "Imperial Grant must be pressed for without delay. What's to happen to the Real Empire if you and I put our private joys first? Eh? Answer me.... There they are, paying in pennies—and us dallying here.... No. Dash it all, no. May be good enough for some of these tame males, but it's a bit below a man. I won't—not now. Not at present. It would be selfish. They've trusted me, and——," a shrug. "No. That's flat. I see my nights being spent over figures and telegrams and all that sort of thing for some time to come.... Don't think I've forgotten. I understand perfectly. I suppose that sooner or later it will have to be the Continent and so on—but not until this job's settled. Not till then. Everything else—everything—has got to stand down. You do see, don't you, Amory? I hope you do."

As he had talked there had come over Amory a sense of what his love must be if nothing but his relentless sense of duty could frustrate it even for a day. And that was more thrilling than all the rest put together. It lifted their whole relation exactly where she had tried to put it without knowing how to put it there—into the regions of the heroic. Not that Edgar put on any frills about it. On the contrary. He was simple and plain and straight. And how perfectly right he was! Naturally, since the "Times" and its servile following of the capitalist Press would not help, Edgar had to all intents and purposes the whole of India to carry on his shoulders. It was exactly like that jolly thing of Lovelace's, about somebody not loving somebody so much if he didn't love Honour more. He did love her so much, and he had as much as said that there would be plenty of time to talk about the Continent later. Besides, his dear, rough, unaffected way of calling this heroic work his "job!" It was just as if one of those knights of old had called slaying dragons and delivering the oppressed his "job!"

Amory was exalted as she had never been exalted. She turned to him where he stood on the hearth, and laved him with a fond and exultant look.

"I see," she said bravely. "I was wretchedly selfish. But remember, won't you, when you're fighting this great battle against all those odds, and saying all those lovely things to the Indians, and getting their confidence, and just showing all those other people how stupid they are, that I didn't stop you, dear! I know it would be beastly of me to stop you! I shouldn't be worthy of you.... But I think you ought to appoint a Committee or something, and have the meetings reported in the 'Novum,' and I'm sure Cosimo wouldn't grudge the money. Oh, how I wish I could help!——"

But he did not say, as she had half hoped he would say, that she did help, by inspiring. Instead, he held out his hand. As she took it in both of hers she wondered what she ought to do with it. If it had been his foot, and he had been the old-fashioned sort of knight, she could have fastened a spur on it. Or she might have belted a sword about his waist. But to have filled his fountain-pen, which was his real weapon, would have been rather stupid.... He was leading her, ever so sympathetically, to the door. He opened it, took from it the notice that had kept Mr. Prang away, and stood with her on the landing.

"Good-bye," she said.

He glanced over his shoulder, and then almost hurt her hands, he gripped them so hard.

"Good-bye," he said, his eyes looking into hers. "You do understand, don't you, Amory?"

"Yes, Edgar."

Even then he seemed loth to part from her. He accompanied her to the top of the stairs.—"You'll let me know when you're coming again, won't you?" he asked.

"Yes. Good-bye."

And she tore herself away.

At the first turning of the stairs Amory stood aside to allow a rather untidy young woman to pass. This young woman had a long bare neck that reminded Amory of an artist's model, and her hands were thrust into the fore-pockets of a brown knitted coat. She was whistling, but she stopped when she saw Amory.

"Do you know whether Mr. Dickinson, the poster artist, is up here?" she asked.

"The next floor, I think," Amory replied.

"Thanks," said the girl, and passed up.