*VII* After a while, between endearments, she managed to say: "So you _do_ want me to make a marriage of convenience?" "No, I want you to make a convenience of marriage. That’s what all sensible people do." "Splendid! Then you won’t expect me to give up the Susan B. Anthony House? I couldn’t leave Mrs. Jerome in the lurch now, you know." "Of course not!" he said. She was to go on with her work, he with his. They should have living places to be alone in, and living places to be together in, like the Havelock Ellises. They’d have a house together in the mountains or the seashore, remote from other people—a biggish house, this would perhaps have to be. But she need manage it no better (or no worse, he trusted) than she now managed the Susan B. Anthony House. Janet laughed at his incorrigible, man-made outlook on the future. Indulgent and happy, she rested her head on his shoulder. "Why didn’t you take your own advice," she asked, "and marry some independently rich woman—Charlotte, for instance?" "Because there are a good many women that I could work with, yet never love. And some few that I could love, yet never work with. But there’s only one that I could work with _and_ love as well. At least, I’ve never met another." "That’s a very pretty speech, Robert, for you. We _were_ good comrades, weren’t we? In the days of Barr and Lloyd!" "From now on, Barr and Lloyd, Inc." "But it isn’t the same Barr nor the same Lloyd that are to be incorporated again. Suppose we prove not to be good comrades, this time?" "In that case, we shall hie us to some genuinely civilized country—Sweden or Cape Comorin—where breach of comradeship is the sole ground for divorce—" Indignant voices from the staircase penetrated their mutual absorption. "Where in the world can they be!" "So this is your _radical_ hospitality!" "Robert—latest method?—proposing by telepathy—imperfect communications—vast silences—heavenly harmony—" "Pooh! Janet’s no fool—nothing like a bee line—marriage license bureau—bird in the bush, you know—" Blushing and looking like culprits, they climbed the stairs and braved the mock indignation meeting which their three friends were holding in the hall between flats 13 and 15. (Robert had rented both flats, as a surprise for Janet.) Lydia went straight to Janet and enfolded her in a copious embrace, whilst Charlotte stood by, ready for a cordial handshake. Mark Pryor, stupefied at this exhibition of feminine perspicacity, could only stare at Robert and mutter: "What! Already?"