'Please don't speak of the money; mine is yours.' 'That makes me seem all the dingier, I know,' said Gerald, half ruefully, yet still smiling at her. 'I do wish I could give it up, just to please you, but really I can't. You must just shut your eyes and pretend I'm not a brute.' After this little encounter, which left its mark on Althea's heart, she felt that Gerald ought to be the more willing to yield in other things and to enter into her projects. 'Don't you think, dear,' she said to him a day or two after, when they were walking together, 'don't you think that you ought soon to be thinking of a seat in Parliament? That will be such a large, worthy life for you.' Gerald, as they walked, was looking from right to left, happily, possessively, over the fields and woods. He brought his attention to her suggestion with a little effort, and then he laughed. 'Good gracious, no! I've no political views.' 'But oughtn't you to have them?' 'You shall provide me with them, dear.' 'Gladly; and will you use them?' 'Not in Parliament,' laughed Gerald. 'But seriously, dear, I hope you will think of it.' He turned gay, protesting, and now astonished eyes upon her. 'But I can't think of it seriously. Old Battersby is a member for these parts, and his seat is as firm as a rock.' 'Can't you find another seat?' 'But, my dear, even if I had any leaning that way, which I haven'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.'