e said:

"But we can surely get that--between us?"

"I propose doing without it."

She looked up--past him--out of the window. All the youthfulness seemed
to have left her face, but he did not appear to see that.

"How can you do so?"

"Well, I can work. I suppose I must be good for something--a bountiful
Providence must surely have seen to that. The difficulty is to find out
what it intends me for. We are not called in the night nowadays to a
special mission--we have to find it out for ourselves."

"Do you know what I should like you to be?" she said, with a bright
smile and one of those sudden descents into shallowness which he
appeared to like.

"What?"

"A politician."

"Then I shall be a politician," he answered, with loverlike promptness.

"That would be very nice," she said; and the castles she at once began
to build were not entirely aerial in their structure.

This was not a new idea. They had talked of politics before as a
possible career for himself. They had moved in a circle where politics
and politicians held a first place--a circle removed above the glamour
of art, and wherein Bohemianism was not reckoned an attraction. She knew
that behind his listlessness of manner he possessed a certain steady
energy, perfect self-command, and that combination of self-confidence
and indifference which usually attains success in the world. She was
ambitious not only for herself but for him, and she was shrewd enough to
know that the only safe outlet for a woman's ambition is the channel of
a husband's career.

"But," he said, "it will mean waiting."

He paused, and then the worldly wisdom which he had learnt from his
father--that worldly wisdom which is sometimes called cynicism--prompted
him to lay the matter before her in its worst light.

"It will mean waiting for a couple of years at least. And for you it
will mean the dulness of a long engagement, and the anomalous position
of an engaged girl without her rightful protector. It will mean that
your position in society will be quite different--that half the world
will pity you, while the other half thinks you--well, a fool for your
pains."

"I don't care," she answered.

"Of course," he went on, "I must go away. That is the only way to get on
in politics in these days. I must go away and get a speciality. I must
know more about some country than any other man; and when I come back
I must keep that country ever before the eye of the intelligent Bri