downs or lying on the river-banks about Henley or Cookham; but it
isn't, you know, the sort of costume for a stroll in the Park."

"Whenever God withdraws from me my small share of common sense,"
said Ingram slowly, "so far that I shall begin to think of having my
clothes made for the purpose of walking in Hyde Park, well--"

"But don't you see," said Lavender, "that one must meet one's friends,
especially when one is married; and when you know that at a certain
hour in the forenoon they are all to be found in a particular place,
and that a very pleasant place, and that you will do yourself good
by having a walk in the fresh air, and so forth, I really don't see
anything very immoral in going down for an hour or so to the Park!"

"Don't you think the pleasure of seeing one's friends might be
postponed till one had done some sort of good day's work?"

"There now!" cried Lavender, "that is another of your delusions. You
are always against superstitions, and yet you make work a fetish. You
do with work just as women do with duty: they carry about with them
a convenient little god, and they are always worshiping it with
small sacrifices, and complimenting themselves on a series of little
martyrdoms that are of no good to anybody. Of course, duty wouldn't be
duty if it wasn't disagreeable, and when they go nursing the sick--and
they could get it better done for fifteen shillings a week by somebody
else--they don't mind coming back to their families with the seeds of
typhus about their gowns; and when they crush the affections in order
to worship at the shrine of duty, they don't consider that they may be
making martyr of other folks, who don't want martyrdom and get no sort
of pleasure out of it. Now, what in all the world is the good of work