gan to cry. 'Not a bit of bread, mother?' 'I gave the last bit to the
children for their teas.' Father said nothing, but he lay down on the
bed. Then he called me. 'Johnnie,' he said, 'I've got work--for next
week--but I sha'n't never go to it--it's too late,' and then he asked me
to hold his hand, and turned his face on the pillow. When my mother came
to look, he was dead. 'Starvation and exhaustion'--the doctor said."

Marion Vincent paused.

"It's just like any other story of the kind--isn't it?" Her smile turned
on Diana. "The charitable societies and missions send them out by scores
in their appeals. But somehow as he told it just now, down-stairs, in
that glaring hall, with the champagne going round--it seemed
intolerable."

"And you mean also"--said Diana, slowly--"that a man with that history
can't know or care very much about the Empire?"

"Our minds are all picture-books," said the woman beside her, in a low,
dreamy voice: "it depends upon what the pictures are. To you the words
'England'--and the 'Empire'--represent one set of pictures--all bright
and magnificent--like the Christmas Bazaar. To John Barton and me"--she
smiled--"they represent another. We too have seen the lights, and the
candles, and the toys; we have admired them, as you have; but we know
the reality is not there. The reality is in the dark streets, where men
tramp, looking for work; it is in the rooms where their wives and
children live stifled and hungry--the rooms where our working folk
die--without having lived."

Her eyes, above her pale cheeks, had opened to their fullest extent--the
eyes of a seer. They held Diana. So did the voice, which was the voice
of one in whom tragic passion and emotion are forever wearing away the
physical frame, as the sea waves break down a crumbling shore.

Suddenly Diana bent over her, and took her hands.

"I wonder why you thought me worth talking to like this?" she said,
impetuously.

"I liked you!" said Marion Vincent, simply. "I liked you as you talked
last night. Only I wanted to add some more pictures to your
picture-book. _Your_ set--the popular one--is called _The Glories of
England_. There is another--I recommend it to you: _The Shames of
England_."

"You think poverty a disgrace?" murmured Diana, held by the glowing
fanatical look of the speaker.

"_Our_ poverty is a disgrace--the life of our poor is a disgrace. What
does the Empire matter--what do Afghan campaigns matter--while London