shocked me: the heroine in 'No. 11 Lambeth Walk' went to Birmingham by a train that left Euston at 2:30 p. m. and her ticket cost nine shillings and twopence halfpenny. An awful misgiving seized me that it was all true and I rang for an A.B.C. and looked out Birmingham. It was so: there was a train at that hour and the tickets cost exactly that." p. m "How wretched!" said Nadine in a pained voice. "Darling, don't take it too much to heart. And one of those novels was about Home Rule and another about Soap, and another about Tariff Reform, and a fourth about Christianity, which was absolutely convincing. But one doesn't go to a novel in order to learn Christianity, or soap-making. One reads novels in order to be entertained and escape from real[Pg 78] life into the society of imaginary and fiery people. Another one—" [Pg 78] Dodo stopped suddenly, as a man came out of the drawing-room window. Then she held both her hands out. "Ah, Jack," she said. "Welcome, welcome!" A very kind face, grizzled as to the hair and mustache, looked down on her from its great height, a face that was wonderfully patient and reasonable and trustworthy. Jack Chesterford wore his years well, but he wore them all; he did not look to be on the summer side of forty-five. He was spare still: life had not made him the unwilling recipient of the most voluminous and ironic of its burdens, obesity, but his movements were rather slow and deliberate, as if he was tired of the senseless repetition of the days. But there seemed to be no irritation mingled with his fatigue: he but yawned and smiled, and turned over fresh pages. But at the moment, as he stood there with both Dodo's hands in his, there was no appearance of weariness, and indeed it would have been a man of dough who remained uninspired by the extraordinary perfection and cordiality of her greeting. It was almost as if she welcomed a lover: it was quite as if she welcomed the best of friends long absent. That she had thought out the manner of her salutation, said nothing against its genuineness, but she could have welcomed him quite as genuinely in other modes. She had thought indeed of putting pathos, penitence, and[Pg 79] shamefacedness into her greeting: she could with real emotion to endorse it have just raised her eyes to his and let them fall again, as if conscious of the need of forgiveness. Or (with perhaps a little less genuineness) she
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