"I take off the boot in question," said Evelyn gravely, "and ring the bell. When answered, I tell them to take away the boot and put in another lace. That is done: then I put the boot on. But I don't wrestle with laces which have not tags. You are wrestling, you know." For the second time this morning a feeling as if she was dealing with a child seized Madge. The child was a very highly-developed man, too. This was a handicap to her; a heavier handicap was that she loved him. Even now, as he sat most undignifiedly wiping the sand from his feet, preparatory to getting his socks on again, she felt this immensely. "The sand will be rubbed through the skin, and cause mortification," he remarked to himself. Madge turned on him with some indignation. "Ah, can't you see," she cried, "that I am serious? And you talk about the sand between your toes! You are rather trying." Evelyn paused in his toilet. "Dearest, I am sorry," he said. "I thought we were still playing the fool! But we are not--you, at any rate, are not. What is it then?" This completeness of surrender was in itself disarming, and her tone was gentle. "It is just this," she said--"that you and I are lost in a golden dream. But the dream can't go on forever. What are we to do? Shall we go back to London? Will you go on painting just as usual? People, perhaps, will be rather horrid to us, you know." Everything now, even to him, had become serious. "Do you mind that?" he asked. "No, of course not, if you don't," she said. "But I have been wondering, dear, whether if by your marriage with me you have hurt your career." "You mean that pink Jewesses who want to be fashionable won't come to ask me to paint their portraits any more?" he said. "No, not that, of course. What does that matter?" Evelyn finished putting his shoes and socks on. "Then, really, I don't understand what you do mean," he said, "by my career, if you don't refer to the class of person who thinks it a sort of _cachet_ to be painted by me--though Heaven knows why she can think that. What are we talking about? How otherwise can my career, which is only my sense of form and colour, be touched?" Madge's eyes dreamed over the sea for a little at this. "No, I was wrong," she said. "Taken like that, it can't matter. But we must (though I was wrong there, I am right here)--we must settle what we are going to do. We must go back some time; you must begin working again." Evelyn finished tying the last lace. "Romney painted Lady Hamilton forty-three times," he said. "I could paint forty Madges of the last hour. You never look the same for two minutes together, and I could paint all of you. Let's have an exhibition next spring called 'Some Aspects of the Honourable Mrs. Dundas. Artist--her husband.'" "They would all come," said Madge. * * * * *