"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
holes in your philosophy, Miss Vinrace, which has its merits, I would
point out that a human being is not a set of compartments, but an
organism. Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your imagination; that's where
you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole. Now for your
second point; when you assert that in trying to set the house in