a "thoroughly efficient" political couple of the "new type." She
explained us to herself and Oscar, she explained us to ourselves,
she explained us to the people who came to her dinners and
afternoons until the world was highly charged with explanation and
expectation, and the proposal that I should be the Liberal candidate
for the Kinghamstead Division seemed the most natural development in
the world.

I was full of the ideal of hard restrained living and relentless
activity, and throughout a beautiful November at Venice, where
chiefly we spent our honeymoon, we turned over and over again and
discussed in every aspect our conception of a life tremendously
focussed upon the ideal of social service.

Most clearly there stands out a picture of ourselves talking in a
gondola on our way to Torcella. Far away behind us the smoke of
Murano forms a black stain upon an immense shining prospect of
smooth water, water as unruffled and luminous as the sky above, a
mirror on which rows of posts and distant black high-stemmed, swan-
necked boats with their minutely clear swinging gondoliers, float
aerially. Remote and low before us rises the little tower of our
destination. Our men swing together and their oars swirl leisurely
through the water, hump back in the rowlocks, splash sharply and go
swishing back again. Margaret lies back on cushions, with her face
shaded by a holland parasol, and I sit up beside her.

"You see," I say, and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect
acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable
antagonism, "it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life.
There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous discipline,