The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy and Vivian came home from their wedding trip. They were settled in Viv's house in Lancaster Gate, and one part of the wings was being turned into a studio for Poppy, with a glass roof. Vivian is the playwright, you know, and his study was to be beneath her work shop, with a private staircase connecting. She was most awfully happy. She'd brought home some stunning sketches, and her first work was going to be his study walls. Basil and I were asked to dinner. Poppy wanted to talk over her plans with us, and there was no one else. Poppy was radiant. We drank to the pony at Tintagel, and to the key at Guildford, and to the new play and the new paintings. The thing was a great success until half way through the dinner, when suddenly Poppy said: "By the way, Viv, the income tax man was here to-day." I felt, for some reason, as I had felt when the key went down my back. Viv smiled, and went to his doom. "Just imagine, Basil," he said. "The sweet young person across the table made more than I did last year! Four thousand pounds!" "I'm too commercially successful to think I have any real genius," said Poppy, complacently. "And some small sum the same sweet young person will have to pay over to the tax man," Basil observed. Poppy raised her violet eyes. "I don't intend to pay it," she said. Vivian put down his glass. "That's what Madge would call a 'bluff,'" he said, with his eyes on her. "You'll be obliged to pay it, dearest. You know that." "'Taxation without representation' is what it amounts to." Poppy's face was dangerously agreeable. "The American colonies seceded, didn't they, for something like that? I paid it last year, but I made up my mind then I'd never do it again." Basil was looking very uncomfortable. "I gave you the privilege of your convictions," said Viv, stiffly. "Of course, if that's your intention, there is nothing more to be said." Poppy looked puzzled. "But it _is_ wrong, isn't it?" she demanded. "Surely that's the a.b.c. of the reason for the discontent of Englishwomen." "The principle may not be entirely equitable. Few laws work equally well for all." Vivian now, a little white about the lips. "But, such as it is, it's the law of your country." "I didn't choose my country, or make it's laws," Poppy said coldly. "I have a right to protest; I'll not pay it." Now, as I have said before, motives are seldom unmixed. I think what Poppy meant to do was simply to register a protest, refuse to pay, make a lot of fuss about it. If they sent her to jail, being the prominent person she was--she was the Honourable Poppy, I think I forgot to say that before--it would make a lot of feeling. She did not mind jail very much. She'd been there twice. Then, having asserted her principles, she could get sick or go on a hunger strike, and Vivian would pay the tax and get her out. Basil laughed with assumed cheerfulness. "Then Viv is stuck for the tax," he said.