“Thank you, Lionel, for the suggestion. I shall confer with Nettie on the details; but I think I see the thing rightly: a sort of visiting association, each day, one hour or two will be employed in the serving of meals in the halls; some will help at luncheon, others at tea, and another group at supper. I should suggest that the men undertook the potation department, and that a committee of helpers should be organised in every district of the Metropolis.” Gwen turned to Eva, sitting close to her, “And you, dear, will be my faithful colleague?” Eva pressed her friend’s hand, but spoke no word, as Sinclair reclining near her sneeringly remarked, “I cannot see you portioning out plates of boiled beef and apple pudding to a crowd of unclean mendicants.” “Are you sure they will be unclean? And if by mendicants you mean those having no clothes nor any money, they will be no worse than we are; for we have no cheque-book, nor any pockets to put our money in,” softly whispered Eva, whose heart was beating violently at the reproof of the man she loved but whom she pitied for his sad limitations. “My dear man,” joined in Lionel, “this idea of the dining-halls is but the preface to a greater reform! It will for the moment meet the need of all the working classes whom the storm has put on the streets; but in the near future it will be our new mode of partaking of our meals in public.” Lionel smiled as he noticed the effect his strange words had on Murray and Sinclair. “Will you allow a few of your privileged friends to have their meals privately in their own homes?” slowly uttered Sinclair, who looked as if the greatest danger was at hand. “By all means, my dear fellow. We force no one; coercion is not the password of our future Society, but personal initiative; and after a little time has gone by, you will be the first to join these _Symposia_. It will only be another form of club life without which you could not have imagined your London; with this difference that your field of sympathy will be enlarged in our new form of assemblies, and instead of meeting daily a limited number of members, about whom you knew all that was to be known, you will join a body of men and women about whom you have hitherto known nothing. I grant you that many of them would not have been admitted in the bosom of your literary and artistic clubs, nor would they have been allowed to associate with the members of smart clubs; but now it will not much avail any man that he was a member of the Vagabond, or of Boodles!” “Anyhow, I think we prefer meeting no one to associating with a mass of illiterate and ill-bred folks,” said Murray.