," she laughed.

   "It would be friendlier to say

    nous autres gens d'esprit

   ," he submitted.

   "Aren't we proving to what degree

    nous autres gens d'esprit sont bêtes

   ," she remarked, "by continuing to walk

   along this narrow pavement, when we can get into Kensington Gardens by merely crossing the street. Would it take you out of your way?"

   "I have no way. I was sauntering for pleasure, if you can believe me. I wish I could hope that you have no way either. Then we could stop here, and crack little jokes together the livelong afternoon," he said, as they entered the Gardens.

   "Alas, my way leads straight back to the Castle. I've promised to call on an old woman in Campden Hill," said she.

   "Disappoint her. It's good for old women to be disappointed. It whips up their circulation."

   "I shouldn't much regret disappointing the old woman," she admitted, "and I should rather like an hour or two of stolen freedom. I don't mind owning that I've generally found you, as men go, a moderately interesting man to talk with. But the deuce of it is—You permit the expression?"

   "I'm devoted to the expression."

   "The deuce of it is, I'm supposed to be driving," she explained.

   "Oh, that doesn't matter. So many suppositions in this world are baseless," he reminded her.

   "But there's the prison van," she said. "It's one of the tiresome rules in the female wing of Castle Ennui that you're always supposed, more or less, to be driving. And though you may cheat the authorities by slipping out of the prison van directly it's turned the corner, and sending it on ahead, there it remains, a factor that can't be eliminated. The prison van will relentlessly await my arrival in the old woman's street."

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