hich their mothers had to spend over their
looms. I'm prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing Keats and
Shelley into the bargain!"

It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and
Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed. He seemed
to mean what he said.

"I know nothing!" she exclaimed.

"It's far better that you should know nothing," he said paternally, "and
you wrong yourself, I'm sure. You play very nicely, I'm told, and I've
no doubt you've read heaps of learned books."

Elderly banter would no longer check her.

"You talk of unity," she said. "You ought to make me understand."

"I never allow my wife to talk politics," he said seriously. "For this
reason. It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both
to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful
to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have
been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she
has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic
duties--what you will; her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives
me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great," he added.

This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of
the finest gold, in the service of mankind.

"I can't think," Rachel exclaimed, "how any one does it!"

"Explain, Miss Vinrace," said Richard. "This is a matter I want to clear
up."

His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave
her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her
heart beat.

"It seems to me like this," she began, doing her best first to recollect
and then to expose her shivering private visions.

"There's an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the
suburbs of Leeds."

Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.

"In London you're spending your life, talking, writing things, getting
bills through, missing what seems natural. The result of it all is that
she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of
sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the country
I admit do this. Still, there's the mind of the widow--the affections;
those you leave untouched. But you waste you own."

"If the widow goes to her cupboard and finds it bare," Richard answered,
"her spiritual outlook we may admit will be affected. If I may pick
hol