iot, and a boy tittered. It seemed that she
"did not know," that she lived in a remote suburb, taking care of a
skinny baby. "I shall call some time or other," said Robert. "Do," said
Mr. Elliot, smiling. And next time he saw his wife he congratulated her
on her rustic admirer.

She had suffered terribly. She had asked for bread, and had been given
not even a stone. People talk of hungering for the ideal, but there is
another hunger, quite as divine, for facts. She had asked for facts
and had been given "views," "emotional standpoints," "attitudes towards
life." To a woman who believed that facts are beautiful, that the living
world is beautiful beyond the laws of beauty, that manure is neither
gross nor ludicrous, that a fire, not eternal, glows at the heart of
the earth, it was intolerable to be put off with what the Elliots called
"philosophy," and, if she refused, to be told that she had no sense of
humour. "Tarrying into the Elliot family." It had sounded so splendid,
for she was a penniless child with nothing to offer, and the Elliots
held their heads high. For what reason? What had they ever done, except
say sarcastic things, and limp, and be refined? Mr. Failing suffered
too, but she suffered more, inasmuch as Frederick was more impossible
than Emily. He did not like her, he practically lived apart, he was not
even faithful or polite. These were grave faults, but they were human
ones: she could even imagine them in a man she loved. What she could
never love was a dilettante.

Robert brought her an armful of sweet-peas. He laid it on the table,
put his hands behind his back, and kept them there till the end of the
visit. She knew quite well why he had come, and though she also knew
that he would fail, she loved him too much to snub him or to stare in
virtuous indignation. "Why have you come?" she asked gravely, "and why
have you brought me so many flowers?"

"My garden is full of them," he answered. "Sweetpeas need picking down.
And, generally speaking, flowers are plentiful in July."

She broke his present into bunches--so much for the drawing-room, so
much for the nursery, so much for the kitchen and her husband's room:
he would be down for the night. The most beautiful she would keep for
herself. Presently he said, "Your husband is no good. I've watched him
for a week. I'm thirty, and not what you call hasty, as I used to be,
or thinking that nothing matters like the French. No. I'm a plain
Britisher, yet-