But how to realise the jewels? In all business affairs, Delia was the merest child. She had been brought up in the midst of large expenditure, of which she had been quite unconscious. All preoccupation with money had seemed to her mean and pettifogging. Have it!--and spend it on what you want. But wants must be governed by ideas--by ethical standards. To waste money on personal luxury, on eating, drinking, clothes, or any form of mere display, in such a world as Gertrude Marvell had unveiled to her, seemed to Delia contemptible and idiotic. One must have _some_ nice clothes--some beauty in one's surroundings--and the means of living as one wished to live. Otherwise, to fume and fret about money, to be coveting instead of giving, buying and bargaining, instead of thinking--or debating--was degrading. She loathed shopping. It was the drug which put women's minds to sleep. Who would help her? She pondered. She would tell no one till it was done; not even Gertrude, whose cold, changed manner to her hurt the girl's proud sense to think of. "I must do it properly--I won't be cheated!" The London lawyers? No. The local solicitor, Mr. Masham? No! Her vanity was far too keenly conscious of their real opinion of her, through all their politeness. Lady Tonbridge? No! She was Mark Winnington's intimate friend--and a constitutional Suffragist. At the notion of consulting her,--on the means of providing funds for "militancy"--Delia sprang out of bed, and went to her dressing, dissolved in laughter. And presently--sobered again, and soft-eyed--she was stealing along the passage to Weston's door for a word with the trained nurse who was now in charge. Just a week now--to the critical day. * * * * * "Is Miss Marvell, in? Ask if she will see Mr. Lathrop for a few minutes?" Paul Lathrop, left to himself, looked round Delia's drawing-room. It set his teeth on edge. What pictures--what furniture! A certain mellowness born of sheer time, no doubt--but with all its ugly ingredients still repulsively visible. Why didn't the heiress burn everything and begin again? Was all her money to be spent on burning other people's property, when her own was so desperately in need of the purging process--or on dreary meetings and unreadable newspapers? Lathrop was already tired of these delights; his essentially Hedonist temper was re-asserting itself. The "movement" had excited and interested him for a time; had provided besides easy devices for annoying stupid people. He had been eager to speak and write for it, had persuaded himself that he really cared. But now candour--and he was generally candid with himself--made him confess that but for Delia Blanchflower he would already have cut his connection with the whole thing. He thought with a mixture of irony and discomfort of his "high-falutin" letter to her.