at running away needs some excuse," said she.

There was a considerable pause before he said, in a low tone:

"Ella, Ella, I know everything--that night. We were saved."

At this moment Mr. Linton entered the room. He was, after all, not late,
he said: it wanted a minute still of being eight o'clock. He had just
been at the telephone to receive a reply regarding a box at Covent
Garden. In the earlier part of the day none had been vacant, he had been
told; but the people at the box office promised to telephone to him if
any became vacant in the course of the afternoon. He had just come from
the telephone, and had secured a good enough box on the first tier. He
hoped that Ella would not mind "Carmen"; there was to be a new _Carmen_.

Ella assured him that she could not fail to be interested in any
_Carmen_, new or old. It was so good of him to take all that trouble for
her, knowing how devoted she was to opera. She hoped that Herbert--she
called him Herbert in the presence of her husband--was in a _Carmen_
mood.

"I'm always in a mood to study anything that's unreservedly savage,"
said he.

"There's not much reservation about our little friend _Carmen_," said
Mr. Linton. "She tells you her philosophy in her first moment before
you."

He hummed the habanera.

"There you are: _Misteroso e l'amore_--that's the philosophy of your
pretty savage, Herbert."

"Yes," said Herbert; "it's that philosophy which consists in an absence
of philosophy--not the worst kind, either, it seems to me. It's the
philosophy of impulse."

"I thought that the aim of all philosophy was to check every impulse,"
said Ella.

"So it is; that's why women do not make good philosophers," said her
husband.

"Or, for that matter, good mothers of philosophers," said Herbert.

"That's rather a hard saying, isn't it?" said the other man.

"No," said his wife; "it's as transparent as air."

"London air in November?" suggested her husband.

"He means that there's no such thing."

"As air in London in November? I'm with him there."

"He means that there's no such thing as a good philosopher."

"Then I hope he has an appetite for dinner. The man without philosophy
usually has."

The butler had just announced dinner.

There was not much talk among them of philosophy so long as the footmen
were floating round them like mighty tropical birds. They talked of the
House of Commons instead. A new measure was to be introduced the next
night: som