Laura reflected that she could delay dinner a half hour, and gave orders to that effect. "We shall have to wait a little," she explained to Corthell as they exchanged greetings in the drawing-room. "Curtis has some special business on hand to-day, and is half an hour late." They sat down on either side of the fireplace in the lofty apartment, with its sombre hangings of wine-coloured brocade and thick, muffling rugs, and for upwards of three-quarters of an hour Corthell interested her with his description of his life in the cathedral towns of northern Italy. But at the end of that time dinner was announced. "Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" Laura asked of the servant. "No, madam." She bit her lip in vexation. "I can't imagine what can keep Curtis so late," she murmured. "Well," she added, at the end of her resources, "we must make the best of it. I think we will go in, Mr. Corthell, without waiting. Curtis must be here soon now." But, as a matter of fact, he was not. In the great dining-room, filled with a dull crimson light, the air just touched with the scent of lilies of the valley, Corthell and Mrs. Jadwin dined alone. "I suppose," observed the artist, "that Mr. Jadwin is a very busy man." "Oh, no," Laura answered. "His real estate, he says, runs itself, and, as a rule, Mr. Gretry manages most of his Board of Trade business. It is only occasionally that anything keeps him down town late. I scolded him this morning, however, about his speculating, and made him promise not to do so much of it. I hate speculation. It seems to absorb some men so; and I don't believe it's right for a man to allow himself to become absorbed altogether in business." "Oh, why limit one's absorption to business?" replied Corthell, sipping his wine. "Is it right for one to be absorbed 'altogether' in anything--even in art, even in religion?" "Oh, religion, I don't know," she protested. "Isn't that certain contribution," he hazarded, "which we make to the general welfare, over and above our own individual work, isn't that the essential? I suppose, of course, that we must hoe, each of us, his own little row, but it's the stroke or two we give to our neighbour's row--don't you think?--that helps most to cultivate the field." "But doesn't religion mean more than a stroke or two?" she ventured to reply. "I'm not so sure," he answered, thoughtfully. "If the stroke or two is taken from one's own work instead of being given in excess of it. One must do one's own hoeing first. That's the foundation of things. A religion that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in my neighbour's hoeing would be genuinely pernicious, surely. My row, meanwhile, would lie open to weeds." "But if your neighbour's row grew flowers?" "Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers, and the weeds of my row would spread until they choked and killed my neighbour's flowers, I am sure."