Only Henry Brand knew the precise amount of their income. Its fluctuations and diminutions were a constant terror to his wife. There were times when money, obtained how she did not know, seemed fairly plentiful; again, at other times, her desk was laden with unpaid bills, and she worked far into the night to make the money wherewith to meet them. She photographed and painted, and could turn her hand to journalism as easily as to upholstery. Accustomed to do without from childhood, she had limited her personal wants to absolute necessities; she was, moreover, a practical woman who could cook and sew or do housework better than most of the people she employed. A world which generally expels its social paupers was singularly lenient to the Brands. Some of the great ladies of the land drove down at night to the tiny flat in West Kensington, where Evelyn dispensed hock-cup and home-made cakes, without a murmur; it was said that two young duchesses, rival beauties, had come incognita on one occasion behind thick veils inside a motor ’bus. The latest explorer, the coming man, gravitated naturally to a place where every guest was made to feel individually welcome. Evelyn’s reunions recalled something of the famous _salons_ of the past. Her tact and sympathy drew opposing bodies together; the little circle had grown from a mere gathering of intimate friends to be the coveted goal of those who wished to meet important persons on an easy and natural footing. Converging opinions met and mixed here like rivers in the sea. Mighty political battles had been fought out in Evelyn’s presence. A famous K.C., with more truth than gallantry, boasted openly that she was the one woman in England who was just and temperate in argument, and the present Prime Minister had said he would drive willingly four miles farther out of London to be welcomed by such a hostess at the end. Unlike most women, technicalities did not alarm her. Men who came to discuss their business investments found in her as ready a listener as men of action. Nor did she shun, although she never actually invited, the confidences of her own sex. The pain of others hurt her physically; to give real sympathy is, after all, to let "virtue go out of one." Most men and women shun sorrow as if it were leprosy. But in the bank of feeling Evelyn’s account was always overdrawn. It was certainly a point in Henry Brand’s favour that he had so early foreseen his wife’s possibilities.