But Spartan suddenly pricked his long ears, and rose in all his lion-like majesty, erect on his four handsome legs; then he gave one deep bark, turning his eyes deferentially on his mistress as one who should say, ‘Excuse me, but I hear something which compels my attention.’ Delicia, her hand on the dog’s neck, listened intently; her breath came and went, then she smiled, and a lovely light irradiated her face as the velvet _portière_ of her study door was hastily pushed aside, and her husband, looking the very incarnation of manly beauty in his becoming riding-gear, entered abruptly. ‘Why, Will, how delightful!’ she exclaimed, advancing to meet him, ‘you hardly ever come home to lunch. This is a treat!’ She clung to him and kissed him. He held her round the waist a moment, gazing at her with the involuntary admiration her grace and intelligence always roused in him, and thinking for the hundredth time how curious it was that she should be so entirely different to other women. Then, releasing her, he drew off his gloves, threw them down, and glanced at the papers which strewed her writing-table. ‘Finished the book?’ he queried, with a smile. ‘Yes, all but the last few sentences,’ she replied. ‘They require careful thinking out. It doesn’t do to end with a platitude.’ ‘Most books end so,’ he said carelessly. ‘But yours are always exceptions to the rule. People are never tired of asking me how you do it. One fellow to-day said he was sure I helped you to write the strong parts.’ Delicia smiled a little. ‘And what did you say?’ ‘Why, of course I said I didn’t—couldn’t write a line to save my life!’ he responded, with a laugh. ‘But you know what men are! They never can bring themselves to believe in the reality of a woman’s genius.’ The musing smile still lingered on Delicia’s face. ‘Genius is a big thing,’ she said. ‘I do not assume to possess it. But it is curious to see how very many quite ungifted men announce their own claims to it, while indignantly denying all possibility of its endowment to women. However, one must have patience; it will take some time to break men of their old savagery. For centuries they treated women as slaves and cattle; it may take other centuries before they learn to treat them as their equals.’ Carlyon looked at her, half-wonderingly, half-doubtfully. ‘They won’t give them full academic honours yet,’ he said, ‘which I think is disgracefully unfair. And the Government won’t give them titles of honour in their own right for their services in Science, Art or Literature, which they ought to have, in my opinion. And this brings me round to the news which sent me galloping home to-day as soon as I heard it. Delicia, I can give you a title this morning!’ She raised her eyebrows a little. ‘Are you joking, Will?’ ‘Not a bit of it. You’ve heard me speak of my brother Guy, Lord Carlyon?’ She nodded.