“I wouldn’t let her stand about long. Her chest is weak, and the Wigans’ fancy-dress ball is coming on. It is to be a grand affair; they’ve talked of it for months. Lucinda was to go as a--blest if I can remember as what--but her bodice was to be the merest apology. You can’t blame a fine woman for showing off her neck and arms. Old Wigan is the proprietor of my paper, a very wealthy man, a very influential one too. It is to my interest to keep in with him. It would never do for us to snub him by keeping away. You’re never safe in journalism. Get a post as editor, and begin to bound on your so many hundreds a year. Phew! the paper changes hands or politics--where are you? Get regular weekly features, make yourself an authority on some subject or other. The public doesn’t want your subject--or you. Journalism is rotten, I tell you, rotten. Only the absolutely unscrupulous, or the totally ignorant, have the least chance. I know men in journalism who are making five pounds a week and more by writing gutter stuff. And I know clever men who barely scrape a hundred and fifty a year. “Where was I? Oh! Lucinda. I know that her bronchial attacks last half through the winter, so I pulled her away out of the crowd. It was a bitterly cold day. “We walked off. She drew up the collar of her coat. I said that it had been foolish of us to stand about in the cold and risk bronchitis, with the Wigans’ fancy-dress ball coming on. “‘I don’t care a bit about the ball,’ she said. ‘I’m not going.’ “‘Not care! not going! But your dress? You’ve bought the silk. It cost a pretty penny.’ “‘Brocade. Twelve and six a yard,’ she groaned. “‘It seemed to me a little stiff. But so long as you are happy----’ “‘Happy! Did you hear what he said? It is dreadful.’ “‘Awful. The police ought to put a stop to----’ “It was Lucinda who stopped--on the edge of the Serpentine. “‘Do you know what you are saying?’ she demanded. “I didn’t like the contemptuous curl of her lip, and returned with some pique: “‘I know what _he_ was saying. Extravagant balderdash! I ought to know something about politics. I take an interest in them--an intelligent interest. I write about them. There’s my weekly letter to the Midland daily, isn’t there? I vote Radical, I’m a Progressive. I’m for the amelioration of--all sorts of things.’ “I wound up vaguely. You can’t talk sane, serious politics to your wife; the true political woman has yet to be born. “‘When we retire to the country in our ripe middle age,’ I went on, ‘I shall take an active interest in local affairs. I shall become a member of the parish council; shall look after rights of way and be down on barbed wire. I’ve my own ideas on the game laws--we shall never have enough money to preserve--and lots of things. I won’t dilate on them. You wouldn’t understand.’ “It was getting dusk. In the distance the crowd--all the little crowds--were melting away. A soldier sat with a girl on a seat. His red coat was warm against the shadows.