“Then I read some of Fred’s essays; Mr. Lester, you know. They used to come out in the _Cornhill_, and I thought them simply wonderful. They said all that I had been thinking, and they were full of that colour that I loved so. The more I read them the more I felt that here was my hero, the man whom I could worship all my days. Poor old Fred, fancy my thinking that about him.” Maradick thought of Mr. Lester trailing with bent back and languid eye over the gorse, and wondered too. “Well, then I met him at a party; one of those literary parties that I used to go to. He was at his best that night and he talked wonderfully. We were introduced, and—well, there it all was. It all happened in a moment. I couldn’t in the least tell you how; but I woke one morning and, like Mr. Somebody or other, a poet I think, found myself married.” Here there was a dramatic pause. Maradick didn’t know what to say. He felt vaguely that sympathy was needed, but it was difficult to find the right words. “That changed me,” Mrs. Lester went on in a low voice with a thrill in it, “from an innocent warm-hearted girl into a woman—a suffering, experienced woman. Oh! Mr. Maradick, you know what marriage is, the cage that it can be; at least, if you haven’t experienced it, and I sincerely hope you haven’t, you can imagine what it is. A year of it was enough to show me how cruel life was.” Maradick felt a little uncomfortable. His acquaintance with Mrs. Lester had been a short one, and in a little time he was going back to have tea with Mr. Lester; he had seemed a harmless kind of man. “I am very sorry——” he began. “Oh, please,” she went on quickly, “don’t think that I’m unhappy. I don’t curse fate or do anything silly like that. I suppose there are very few persons who find marriage exactly what they expect it to be. I don’t complain. But oh! Mr. Maradick, never marry an author. Of course you can’t—how silly of me!—but I should like you to understand a little what I have felt about it all.” He tried clumsily to find words. “All of us,” he said, “must discover as we get on that things aren’t quite what we thought they would be. And of marriage especially. One’s just got to make up one’s mind to it. And then I think there’s a lot to be grateful for if there’s only one person, man or woman, to whom one matters; who, well, sticks to one and——” “Oh! I know,” she sighed reminiscently. “What I mean is that it doesn’t so much matter what that person is, stupid or ugly or anything, if they really care. There isn’t so much of that steady affection going about in the world that we can afford to disregard it when it comes. Dear me!” he added with a laugh, “how sentimental I am!”