The afternoon tea--the strawberries and cream which make a coolness and delight in the midst of the raging day--has been erected by woman into one of London's daily social events; and though the novelist has not discovered the fact up to this moment--Mr. McCarthy has made a very pretty love scene on the Terrace, but it is at the witching hour of night--though this discovery has yet to come, the respite is brief, and in a short time we shall have the hero and the heroine passing through all the agonies of three-volume suffering, to the accompaniment of the division bell and the small tea-table of the Terrace. But though woman has many slaves she has her watchful enemies. The great order of curmudgeon is wide and vigilant and crusty, and the curmudgeon has found that the vast crowds of ladies who have invaded the Terrace have at last begun to interfere with that daily constitutional along its stretching length, which is the only exercise most members of Parliament are able to take in these fierce days. Accordingly, there appeared an ominous notice-board with the words, "For members only," at a particular point in the Terrace. Within the space, before which this notice stood as a fiery sword, woman was not allowed to intrude; and from out its sacred enclosure--guarded by nothing but the line of the notice and the Speaker's wrath--the confirmed bachelor, the married cynic, smoked his cigarette, and looked lazily through at the chattering, tea-drinking, bright-coloured crowd immediately beyond. [Sidenote: Demos and dinner.]