"As the number of one's years grows more, and the number of one's friends correspondingly less, one feels compelled to grapple the residue to one's heart with hoops of steel. Therefore please come to us for a week-end and be grappled. "Besides, we want to show you this great Babylon that we have built, and wherein we are now abiding. It is such a comfort to be securely planted in a country home of one's own, after having been potted-out for years in furnished houses; and the facts that our particular Babylon is not at all great, and that its hot-water supply leaves much to be desired in the way of heat, in no way imperil our fundamental happiness in the creation of our own hands. And the garden is lovely, although we cannot live in it entirely until it has been thoroughly aired, as both Paul and I have been indulging in those Entreat-me-not-to-leave-thee sort of colds which are so prevalent just now. Therefore so far we can only take walking exercise under our own vine and fig-tree: it is too cold to sit under them at present. "I send you a selection of all the week-ends between now and Easter to choose from. "Always your friend, "ISABEL CHAYFORD. Isabel's letter was kind, like herself; and it was kind of her to take pity on a lonely and desolate man like me: but all the same, I did not avail myself of her kindness. I knew that it would be indeed a sort of comfort to tell her all my troubles, and to ask for her opinion the tragedy of my life, and she was the only person to whom I felt I could speak freely about the blow which had fallen on me. I believe that a truly manly man locks up all his sorrows in his own breast, and throws the key into the dust-bin of dead memories. But I have never been the sort of manly creature that female novelists delight to honour. There is a great strain of woman in me, and always has been: and not the most heroic sort of woman, either. But though I longed for the consolation and counsel of Isabel, I felt that in my present morbid condition I could not stand the principles and politics of Paul. In the old days I had put up with Paul on account of Isabel: now I gave up Isabel on account of Paul. The difference was merely chronological. When we are young, the pleasure of anything always swallows up the attendant pain: as we grow older, the attendant pain swallows up any possible pleasure. And that is life. So I refused Lady Chayford's kind invitation. But the woman who had once been Isabel Carnaby was not the woman to be put off by a mere refusal. So she invited herself to motor over and have lunch with me instead: and she never even suggested to bring his lordship with her.