front of her nose after a fashion at once evasive and expressive. He brought each volume to the Princess as it was finished, but her manner of receiving it was to shake her head over it with a kind, sad smile. “It’s beautiful, I’m sure, but I’ve lost my sense for such things. Besides, you must always remember what you once told me, that a woman, even the most cultivated, is incapable of feeling the difference between a bad binding and a good. I remember your once saying that fine ladies had brought cobbled leather to your shop and wished it imitated. Certainly those are not the differences I most feel. My dear fellow, such things have ceased to speak to me; they’re doubtless charming, but they leave me cold. What will you have? One can’t serve God and Mammon.” Her thoughts were fixed on far other things than the delight of dainty covers, and she evidently considered that in caring so much for them Hyacinth resembled the mad emperor who fiddled in the flames of Rome. European society, to her mind, was in flames, and no frivolous occupation could give the measure of the emotion with which she watched them. It produced occasionally demonstrations of hilarity, of joy and hope, but these always took some form connected with the life of the people. It was the people she had gone to see when she accompanied Hyacinth to a music hall in the Edgeware Road, and all her excursions and pastimes this winter were prompted by her interest in the classes on whose behalf the fundamental change was to be wrought.