with which it is pursued. Unhappily the joy of those who thus
pursue a much-loved occupation is bound to overflow in words; and if
they have no daily auditor within their own four walls, they are driven
by circumstances to choose their confidants haphazard when they go out.
Miss Tarlton's confidences, however, were all of an optimistic
character: she inflicted on her hearers no grievances against destiny.
She recorded her vote, so to speak, in favour of content, and thereby
established a claim to be heard.

To see her starting on one of her photographing expeditions was to be
convinced that she considered the scheme of the universe satisfactory,
as she went off with her felt hat jammed on to her head, with an air,
not of radiant pleasure perhaps, but of faith in her occupation of
unflinching purpose. With her camera slung on to her bicycle and her fat
little feet working the pedals, she had the air of being the forerunner
of a corps of small cyclist photographers. Life appealed to Miss Tarlton
according to its adaptability to photography. For this reason she was
not preoccupied with the complications of sentiment or of the softer
emotions which not even the Roentgen rays have yet been able to reproduce
with a camera.

"How do you do, Lady Gore?" she said as she came in. "I am later than I
meant to be. I was so afraid I should not get here to-day, but I knew
how anxious you would be to see the photographs."

"How kind of you!" Lady Gore said vaguely, for the moment entirely
forgetting what the photographs were.

Miss Tarlton, after greeting the other members of the party, and making
acquaintance with Rendel, all on her part with the demeanour of one who
quickly despatches preliminaries before proceeding to really important
business, drew off her gloves, displaying strangely variegated fingers,
and proceeded to take from the case she was carrying photographs in
various stages of their existence.

"I have brought you the negatives of one or two," she said, holding one
after another up to the light, "as I didn't wait to print them all. Ah,
here is one. This is how you must hold it, look."

Lady Gore tried to look at it as though it were really the photograph,
and not the equilibrium of a most difficult situation, that she was
trying to poise. Sir William was about to propose to Rendel to come down
with him to his study, but Miss Tarlton obligingly included everybody at
once in the concentration upon her photographs w