and find her.'

'How do you know?' she asked. 'I may be only acting. That is what
women do. They find out by instinct the ideal in a man's mind and
reproduce it.'

He shook his head.

'All ideals to all men? ... You have given the game away.'

'That might only be the cleverest trick of all.'

For a moment he was suspicious of her, but this coquetry was noble and
designed to please and soothe him.

'I'm in for a bad time,' he said simply. 'Things have been too easy
for me so far. I gave myself twenty years in which to produce what I
want and what the world must have.... Things aren't so simple as all
that.'

'Do drink your tea. I think you take everything too hardly. People
don't know that they are indifferent. There are so many things to do,
so many people to meet, they are so busy that they don't realise that
they are standing still and just repeating themselves over and over
again.'

'Damn the orchestra!' said Rodd. The first violin was playing a solo
with muted strings. 'If people will stand this, they will stand
anything. It is slow murder.'

'Do believe that they like it,' replied Clara.

'Slow murder?'

'No. The--music.'

'Same thing.' He laughed. 'Oh, well. You have robbed me of my
occupation. When shall we meet again?'

'To-morrow?'

'To-morrow. You shall see how I live-- If you can spare the time I
would like to take you to a concert. I always test my friends with
music.'

'Even the New Woman?'

His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his sensitive lips.

XII

RODD AT HOME

They met on the morrow, a hot August day, with the heat quivering up
from the pavements and the walls of the houses.... Rodd was the first
to arrive at the book-shop where they had arranged to meet. The
bookseller chaffed him about the 'young leddy,' because Rodd had never
been known to speak to any one--male or female, in the shop.

'That's a fine young leddy,' said the bookseller. 'She knows that to
do good to others is to do good to yourself. And mind ye, that's a
fact. It's not preaching. It's hard scientific fact.'

'Who is she?' asked Rodd.

'She's an actress-girl, and she is friendly with lords. How she came
to find a poor shop like mine I cannot tell ye. But in she walked, and
my luck turned from that day.'

Clara came in. She stood on the threshold of the shop and turned over
the papers that stood there on a table. She had seen Rodd, but wished
to gain a momen