“We can’t grow consumption-proof in a generation, nor can we grow poverty-proof.” “We can begin to take active measures,” he replied contemptuously. “We can all go into a sanatorium and live miserably and dejectedly warding off death,” she said, “but life is full of goodliness for all that.” “It is fuller of misery,” he said. Nevertheless, she had shaken him. She still kept her astonishing power of influencing his opinions. All his passion, and heat, and rude speech, analysed out, was only his terror at her threatening of his life-interest. She was rather piqued by his rough treatment of her, and by his contemptuous tone. Moreover, she could never quite let him be. She felt a driving force which impelled her almost against her will to interfere in his life. She invited him to dine with them at Highclose. He was now quite possible. He had, in the course of his business, been sufficiently in the company of gentlemen to be altogether _“comme it faut”_ at a private dinner, and after dinner. She wrote me concerning him occasionally: “George Saxton was here to dinner yesterday. He and Leslie had frightful battles over the nationalisation of industries. George is rather more than a match for Leslie, which, in his secret heart, makes our friend gloriously proud. It is very amusing. I, of course, have to preserve the balance of power, and, of course, to bolster my husband’s dignity. At a crucial dangerous moment, when George is just going to wave his bloody sword and Leslie lies bleeding with rage, I step in and prick the victor under the heart with some little satire or some esoteric question, I raise Leslie and say his blood is luminous for the truth, and vous voilà! Then I abate for the thousandth time Leslie’s conservative crow, and I appeal once more to George—it is no use my arguing with him, he gets so angry—I make an abtruse appeal for all the wonderful, sad, and beautiful expressions on the countenance of life, expressions which he does not see or which he distorts by his oblique vision of socialism into grimaces—and there I am! I think I am something of a Machiavelli, but it is quite true, what I say——” Again she wrote: